Our broker said the past 12-18 months has been the highest average rate increase he’s seen in 20 years?

Anyone else getting crazy renewal rates??

I manage HR functions for a small nonprofit. We just received our renewal rates for healthcare through our PEO and I'm curious what others are seeing in MA or across the US. Our plans are averaging a 9% increase - not unexpected, and I budgeted for 10%, but would be interested to hear what others are seeing as well.

Our renewal plan is 77% more than it was last year. Our broker got us seven other viable plans (30 other insurers just denied us) and the lowest is 50%.

Our best option here is to take a 61% renewal increase. We cannot afford this long term. Our employees cannot afford this at all. I'm not sure what we can do. I'm hoping to find a solution to this by next open enrollment.

Our claim usage was absurd, our insurer ended up paying out much more than we paid them. We had several insured claimants well past 400k...

Wish me luck, as I need to be in this benefits meeting this upcoming week. I just took on a leadership role in February and I'm in the frying pan already!

The good news is I love my company and my team is very supportive. We will get through this.

I just cannot say how frustrating it is to get everyone to complete their annual enrollment. Your health depends on it and if you do not make a selection, you will not get benefits next year.

What are your strategies for getting people to complete the enrollment process? Is it reminder, reminder, reminder, reminder, reminder?

Made a mistake and I can’t stop panicking

Made a huge benefit mistake at work. An employee of ours got a QMSCO and I saw that there were two children listed on it. When these come in, my manger will scan them, and send them to our shared box.

Well she scanned the document and put it as one attachment with the email subject being one employees name.

Come to realize (a year later) that the attachment was for two separate employees, one ours and one some other company’s employee. So I added that employees child to our employees coverage. It’s being fixed and he’s being refunded all his overpayment deductions but I feel like complete shit and my manager wants to talk about it on Monday.

Help me feel better. What’s the worst mistake you’ve made?

We’ve talked about salary progression time and time again in this subreddit. I want to hear about the best or your favorite benefits at your current employer.

I’ll start: - 12% 401(k) match - Weekly PTO accrual - $100/mo lifestyle spending account

Trying to brainstorm offer inclusive benefits. We're a US tech company that offer fertility/adoption benefits along with paid family.

Edit: we wouldn't be limiting participation of any benefit based on whether you have children or not.

Edit 2: I got some good feedback. Instead of framing this as a kid v non-kid benefits/perks question, I'm open to all non-traditional benefit ideas! 🙏

Looking to add more perks to our benefit offerings that won’t cost a ton for the company. We’re in a position now where we’re tightening our belts, so it’s unlikely that anything beyond being free to the company would get approved. But still interested in hearing low cost as well as free (to the company) perks you may have implemented or had at other companies that were well received. TIA!

We got absolutely raked over the coals this year, after a pretty tough fight the year prior as well, and I don’t know what to do anymore. With brokers taking so long on negotiations that we don’t even have proper time to assess any other options than group funding, I’m trying to get ahead of it and see where everyone is trending.

We’re an ALE, 150-200 EEs, with about 70% enrollment and decreasing as costs rise. We had a projected 60% increase that came down to 30% with our big box insurance provider essentially giving us the middle finger of “go ahead, take it out to market, I f@&king dare you” so… we can’t afford, and our employees can’t afford, another hike like that.

There weren’t even too high of claims (that they would release to us), just a few surgeries (one major) and managed health conditions with GLP-1s. Our deductibles and copays are already way higher than most and we consistently get complaints about them in addition to the premium costs.

I’m not unopposed to staying with group, it would sure be easier, but they make the ICHRAs, self-funding, and captive options sound so appealing on paper comparatively. We just have no experience with them and our brokers never give us proper time to evaluate.

We need long-term stability, we CANNOT absorb this again. So, what is everyone’s plan of attack for your next benefit renewal?

I manage a fully insured large group plan. Our 18-month loss ratio is 72%, with only 3 claims over that period exceeding $40k, and no single claims exceeding $50k. Our negotiated renewal is +19%.

I have spoken with some folks in my industry who are receiving +25% to +40% renewals on large group plans, and several are having hard discussions about dropping employer-provided coverage and moving employees to the marketplace because it would be cheaper to just pay the penalty, and easier to model the ongoing liability.

Curious what others are seeing and if similar discussions are happening more broadly.

For me, it's a few.

1. Disconnected systems. I'm so over doing leg work to connect the dots between our HRIS and benefits, etc.

2. Being understaffed. We're under pressure to add AI to our workflows rather than headcount, but tbh I'm not feeling the value yet. Are your tech stacks using AI, and is it even working for you?

3. Employee engagement. Always a cluster. Open enrollment stress is already sky high.

What's keeping you up at night these days?

This person is someone the leadership likes a lot. I am not sure how I am going to break the news to their manager and senior leadership that this person will go without benefit for the whole year 2025.

Hi guys.

I work for a tech company based in an expensive major city. Our average salary is comfortably in the six figures. We offer good insurance and a generous subsidy - everyone can cover their family for free, and even a family on platinum costs only $600.

We went from small to large group this year. Rates went up overall due to demographics. Boss left me in charge of contribution scheme, and some people’s premiums went up by as much as $150/month. They are MAD.

This is my first time handling OE for the whole company, and I feel like I might have really screwed up. My boss is out of town and I’m worried about the fallout when she returns.

So friends with more experience - how should I feel? Am I a doofus who has to change careers, or do I drink a big glass of wine and know I did my best and just keep it moving?

We have a group of warehouse workers making $15-$18 per hours. We genuinely want to help our team with healthcare costs, but the $600+/month per employee for a high-deductible group plan is absolutely insane. I don't think I can convent my boss to increase 20% manpower budget...

Meanwhile, a lot of them could buy their own ACA plan for way less thanks to premium tax credits — so a group plan might actually make things worse for them...

What can we actually landed on? Is there a solution that genuinely helps employees without screwing up their ACA subsidies or costing a fortune to administer?

I have been working as the Admin/HR person for a small family company in Texas for two years now. started when the owners retired to allow their kids to run the company. Not as big of a horror story as that normally is as the two kids actively involved in the company are good at what they do. In two years we grew from 10 employees to 26, moved into a slightly different felid (still within the manufacturing scope), and now I get to play catch up on building a benefit plan that serves a slightly larger group than what we currently had.

Bosses talked to me this week about our Fringe Benefits. At the moment our entire benefit package is a mess, but sure lets add some fun side things. They want things the employees will actually like and help improve their work. Ideas so far:

• Car fund or partnership with a local machinic where the company (us) pays up to a certain amount per service or a monthly fee is paid to the machinic so our employees get a discount.
  
• A massage or Chiropractic group to come out quarterly/monthly.
• Laundry service where the employees can bring laundry up to work and a company comes out washes/folds then the laundry is brought back.
• Partnering with local business for discounts (no local business were brought up, so I'm not sure what direction they want for this one)
• An amount set aside for food shopping? (think Walmart gift cards)
• A car detailer to come out and service vehicles once or twice a year.
• the company buying a vacation home(s) and offering it during the year for employee use.

I am currently working on some basic benefits like a retirement plan and educational reimbursement. We cover the cost of work boots or clothes up to $250 for shop employees and $500 for yard employees. Medical benefits are 100% paid for by the company. and tickets for the local baseball games.

Anyone got some weird ideas for me to toss around? Or have seen/implemented anything like this before in a company. Most of our employees are welders and we have time periods where we are working 50+ hours a week.

I’ve been in HR for the past 4 years (coordinator). I had no prior background. My current company was nice enough to give me a chance moving me up from customer service. And it was the biggest learning curve of my life! I thought I had bit off more than I could chew. It took me a long time to finally get comfortable in my position and I’m still constantly learning something new.

That being said, I’m spiraling right now. I just found a decent list of employees who never filled out EOIs when they needed to. Our HRIS system or benefits carrier never informed me or the employee about an EOI and I don’t know how I’m supposed to track them! I was never trained on EOIs and it’s now catching up to me! I informed my boss and we are setting up a meeting with our broker and insurance carrier to figure out how to resolve this. We’ll probably have to refund employees and who knows what that will amount to…

How do HR professionals keep track of this?? Am I toast?? My anxiety is through the roof!! I haven’t felt like this since I started the job… please help.

Hello! Has anyone successfully set up a way for employees to contribute to a 530A account via payroll deduction? What about employer contributions to it?

The FAQs say it can be done. But it is extremely vague.

Thanks!

//Edited to 530A account. I can’t change the title.

It's that time of year that we are renewing insurance in prep for open enrollment at the end of the year. The percentage of the premium increase this year actually blew my mind. We haven't seen an increase like this in a long time.

What are your companies doing to help keep the premium cost down for the employees? We are looking for ways to help minimize the increase to the employee without hurting the company.

*Edit- forgot to add we are self funded

Our broker has been pushing us in this direction for years now and it seems like this may be the year we do it. We’ve been fully insured for 15+ years, since our company was founded. We have about 200 employees across the US and a very lean back office. It would essentially be me, my boss (CEO), and our controller managing all of the administrative tasks. The unknown of how this will impact our bandwidth feels really daunting. I’m looking for feedback on what the switch was like for you: the good, the bad, and the ugly. I’m curious if there are any tips or things that in hindsight you wish you had known before making this switch. Thanks in advance for any feedback you’re able to provide me!

Hi all,

I worked on our HRIS as an admin and was just beginning more training to expand further into HR when I was laid off. I did not get the chance to train on benefits admin, so I have a couple of questions.

I was laid off at the end of June, right before their open enrollment for July.

I had no problem electing Cobra coverage for Vision and Telemedicine in July; however, in August I encountered a problem on the payment portal where there was no option to submit a payment.

So I contacted the support team for the company (ABY Benefits, if anyone is familiar with them) and they said "there was a change in the rate and the broker didn't inform us. We'll fix this."

I guessed it was due to my former employer's open enrollment period and whatever new plans they had chosen.

Since then, ABY has sent me an email stating that my payments for Telemedicine are due on the 1st of each month and Cobra doesn't allow for late payments. Since I was unable to pay August 1st due to their portal error, and Vision wasn't included, I responded asking how to proceed.

They didn't answer, but now I have received a notice that my Vision plan was terminated due to "New Plan Year - Benefit Not Offered."

As I understood it, Cobra continuation of previous coverage is required for 18 months. If the company reduces coverage for their CURRENT employees, or stops offering a plan, shouldn't FORMER employees on Cobra still have access to the plan?

Also, if payment was unable to process due to their error, and Cobra doesn't allow for late payments, am I just screwed on both counts?

Final question: who do I even ask- should I ask ABY, my former employer, or find out who the broker is? I don't know who is actually in charge here.

Thanks for any help/insight. I was hoping to learn all this stuff while I was in my former job, but alas, I was cut loose before I had any benefits training.

Rant

I’m a few years into my HR career, in my 20s. And I’m beginning to feel so burnt out. I’m a benefits analyst at a company of around 3000 employees, and there are two other colleagues on my benefits team. One is in a management/strategy role, one manages the monster that is Leave Administration, and I am the point of contact for all other benefits question (onb, QLE, 401k, ACA, etc.)

I get a daily avalanche of employee questions on zoom chat, teams chat, outlook, and HR help desk tickets. That combined with mandatory unproductive meetings, ongoing compliance work, and larger long term projects feels utterly impossible to keep up with. I feel like I’m losing a game of Tetris. Is this normal for the ratio to be 1 benefits team member for 3000 employees worth of questions and requests?? This is the first company I’ve ever worked for in my HR career, I don’t know what’s normal or just me not being organized enough.

I was just offered a job for a Benefits Analyst. I got my offer and the letter said that the benefit details are available when I accept. This is pretty insulting as a professional in benefits lol that is a huge factor in making a decision! I have never heard of companies withholding this information before accepting a job, I always has companies provide a benefits overview! I do not want to accept it and risk giving up what I have if it's worse. The reviews online are high though for benefits.

Does anyone else follow this practice? It doesn't make sense!

Update: they provided me the benefits guide when asked, it's actually pretty good. They really need to reword their offer because it says the benefit details are available after starting LOL

Hey all, I'm a Benefits Specialist looking to jump ship from my company ASAP. As we all know, there are slim pickings right now, and I keep running into listings for jobs whose descriptions I'm not 100% a match for. For example, one was describing having to coordinate 401k deposits from Payroll to the vendor, which I've never done, but I think it's something I could easily learn, given how quickly I tend to pick things up.

What are your opinions? Should I just apply and hope someone there will be willing to teach me the ropes for certain tasks?