Park City, UT (PRWEB) November 06, 2013
Today, Zane Benefits, the number one online small business health benefits solution, published new information on the defined contribution tipping point.
According to Zane Benefits’ website, industry experts and economists agree that defined contribution healthcare is on the rise. Not only on the rise, but that defined contribution healthcare is a major trend and the future of how employers will offer health benefits. This is not brand new. Defined contribution healthcare has been increasing the past few years. But with health reform's new advantages to the individual health insurance market, 2014 will be a tipping year for defined contribution healthcare.
Defined contribution healthcare is a strategy for offering health benefits. Instead of offering a defined benefit, companies provide employees a fixed healthcare allowance to spend on health insurance. Employees then use their health insurance allowance to purchase individual or group health coverage. There are two main approaches with defined contribution health plans.
The first is a "pure" defined contribution approach paired with individual health insurance. With pure defined contribution healthcare, employees purchase individual policies from any carrier. With pure defined contribution, the employer does not prescribe a specific menu of plans to choose from. Employees can purchase any eligible policy from an insurance broker, online, through the state exchange, etc.
The second is a group-based defined contribution approach, where employees can use their allowance to select from employer-defined plan options on a private health insurance exchange. With this approach, employers offer a set allowance to employees, and employees select a plan from a set menu of options.
According to Zane Benefits’ website, while larger businesses have been early adopters of group-based defined contribution, it's the small businesses and non-profits who are driving the trend of pure defined contribution healthcare paired with individual health insurance. Because of the changes in health reform that favor the individual health insurance market, and because of the unsustainable cost of group health insurance, more and more businesses of all sizes will look at pure defined contribution as a viable health benefits strategy. Likewise, more and more health insurance brokers are adding defined contribution healthcare to their offerings.
Click here to read the full article.
About Zane Benefits
Zane Benefits was founded in 2006 to provide a revolutionized SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) administration platform ("ZaneHealth") for defined contribution health care. The flagship software provides a 100% paperless administration experience to small businesses and insurance professionals that want to offer better health benefits without a traditional group health insurance plan at lower costs. For more information about Zane Benefits, visit http://www.zanebenefits.com.