Blue Cross of Massachusetts has added a great rider that can be add to their small group plans (50 and under employees), that many groups do not know about, called Healthy Actions. It does add costs to your premiums, but the costs are quite reasonable:
- 10-49 employees .40% added to premium
- 2-9 employees 1.25% added to premium
- 1 employee 2.50% added to premium
Employee
A subscriber needs to complete a health risk assessment on-line and bring it to their annual well-care physical, which has no co-payment. One of two things will happen:
| If the doctor determines that the employee: | Then after submitting the form the employee: |
| Is healthy |
|
| Needs to improve their health (for example, lose weight, take medication to lower cholesterol) |
|
Employer
Blue Cross will give the employer credit of their annual premium based on the percentage of their employees who receive the full $300
| Percent of employees who earn the full $300 reward | Your reward is… |
| 20-49% | 1.25% of current year’s premium |
| 50-79% | 2.50% of current year’s premium |
| 80-100% | 5.00% of current year’s premium |
Example
We recently had a small group of four employees who added this rider to their plan
- Monthly Premium without Healthy Actions was $2,700
- Monthly Premium with Healthy Actions increased by 1.25% per month $33.75 or $405 for the plan year
- Each employee earned $300 for a total of $1,200
- Since the group was in the 80-100% range they received a credit equal to 5% of their annual premium or approximately $1,600
- $2,800 was returned by Blue Cross in total to the employees and the employer.
- Their $405 investment returned over 700% ($,2800)
If you have Blue Cross and your group is relatively healthy, you need to be looking at this rider. If you want to learn how to add this to your current plan, send me an e-mail.
