October 6, 2021
As companies continue to feel the pressure from increasing costs of employee benefit plans and healthcare costs, they need solutions. Their employees, who face greater and greater cost-sharing requirements like deductibles and co-pays, also need relief. One healthcare strategy that has received increasing attention over the years is Value-Based Care. It can take the form of Accountable …
September 22, 2021
There are still a few days left before the September 30th deadline for the California Small Business COVID-19 Relief Grant program. There is a dedicated website for the program here: CAReliefGrant.com. These grants do not need to be paid back and can range from $5,000 to $25,000. If a business is in one of the following industries, …
September 22, 2021
September is Suicide Prevention Month and World Suicide Prevention Day was recognized on September 10. The LBL Group is committed to helping our clients create save workplaces that support employees across the spectrum of health needs, including mental and behavioral health. To this end, our consultant John Hansbrough was quoted by Going Digital: Behavioral Health …
September 15, 2021
A quick google search of “Health Insurance Private Equity” returns 307,000,00 results. Most of these address the impact of private equity investments from a medical economics perspective, such as videos by Dr. Eric Bricker entitled Private Equity Owning Doctor Practices or Older Doctors Selling Out to Private Equity. But much fewer discuss the impact of …
September 8, 2021
In offering group health plans to employees, businesses have a lot to navigate and understand about the options presented by their benefits advisor team. The smaller the employer, the fewer the options available to them, while the largest employers with thousands of employees have every vendor clamoring for their business. But the majority of businesses …
September 1, 2021
Today’s competitive landscape and rapidly changing technologies are disrupting previous practices and forcing businesses to re-evaluate how and what they pay for the services they buy and the relationships they enter. Insurance and human resource services are no different. What is an Employee Benefits Advisor Before we go into more discussion, let’s first define an …
August 24, 2021
The Commonwealth Fund released their periodic comparison report of various national health systems this month entitled “Mirror, Mirror 2021: Reflecting Poorly.” The report is a series of comparisons performed every 4 years, with prior entries in the series below: 2017: International Comparison Reflects Flaws and Opportunities for Better U.S. Health Care 2014: How the U.S. …
August 19, 2021
We’ve been closely watching reports on how Americans have been consuming healthcare as the COVID pandemic has evolved. In 2020, we saw drastic decreases in services, leading to worry about the impact of skipped screenings and doctor’s visits such as preventative services. Previous conversations with our friend Josh Axene (July 2020, January 2021) centered on …
August 11, 2021
Healthcare costs are a top expense for most businesses, so companies can find great value in cost reduction strategies. And if we can marry lower costs for a business with as good, if not better, benefits and outcomes? That’s the goal. One such strategy that has typically been reserved for only the largest employers is Direct …
August 4, 2021
Grant Thornton, a large accounting company, conducts a survey of CFOs every quarter and their second-quarter survey of 2021 yielded some insights on how finance leaders are thinking about talent shortages and rising employee benefit costs. CFOs and People Leaders See Rising Health Plan Costs as a Challenge The key takeaway is that human capital …
