American workers are more stressed than ever coming out of the pandemic, and an increasing number of people are also struggling with mental health issues.
Sadly, the number of people dying from drugs, alcohol and suicide hit record levels in 2022.
When someone is battling addiction or has mental health issues, it affects all aspects of their life, including work. Stress can have a significant adverse impact on business. It costs employers an average of $300 billion a year in stress-related health care and missed work, according to a Harris Poll conducted for Purchasing Power.
That’s why more employers are stepping up to provide their workers with benefits to support behavioral health and emotional well-being.
Employee assistance programs
One of the most common ways that businesses have offered support is through employer-paid employee assistance programs (EAPs), which offer a set amount of free mental health services sessions, typically topping out at five to eight per year. But for many people who are experiencing mental health issues, this may not be enough.
Some larger employers have started offering mental health benefits that cover a higher number of therapy sessions and wider range of treatment options, including therapy and mental health coaching.
Additionally, studies have found that offering a mix of online services such as digital lessons and in-person or virtual therapy can lead to lower therapy dropout rates, plus higher rates of abstinence for clients with substance abuse issues.
As a result, some employers are offering programs that cover a spectrum of behavioral health care options, such as:
Self-care apps for employees experiencing occasional stress
In-person therapy sessions
Virtual therapy sessions
Prescription medication to treat common, diagnosable conditions such as anxiety or depression.
Companies usually offer EAPs at no cost to their employees. Most employers operate their EAP through a third party administrator, which can be crucial to the success of your EAP.
Employees have to feel comfortable discussing professional and personal problems with the EAP administrator, and if your business administers your EAP, it could prevent employees from coming forward and asking for the help they require.
That said, it’s up to you to make sure your staff understands that they can talk about mental health without fear of it affecting their jobs. You should train management and supervisors on the importance of confidentiality and job protection if one of your staff asks for assistance or raises mental health concerns.
Don’t forget your health insurance
There is an extensive list of mental health services your health plan should provide your staff. These services include outpatient and inpatient treatment, telemedicine, medication and counseling. Each of these attributes can be vital for treating mental illnesses.
Of course, there will likely be some out-of-pocket costs for your employees that use these services under their group health plans.
One service that is growing and improving success rates is the continuing evolution of telemedicine. According to the benefits news site BenefitsPro, telemedicine can make getting care anonymous and convenient, so patients can receive it where they’re most comfortable. This is especially valuable when dealing with the sensitive matter of mental health.
Other options
American workers are more stressed than ever, and some may not need counseling services from an EAP to reduce their life stress. Besides offering an EAP, there are other benefits that you can extend to your workers that can help them better deal with the ordeals of life and work, including:
Parental leave — Becoming a new parent is extremely stressful. If you don’t offer parental leave, and instead require parents to take unpaid time off, such as under the Family and Medical Leave Act, this stress is compounded. Paternal leave is paid time off for new parents, either mom or dad, after the birth or adoption of a child. It gives parents the opportunity to take care of their new child without the stress of work getting in the way.
The benefit to the employer is that when the worker returns from their leave, they are more productive, sooner. Consider offering this to both male and female employees.
Paid time off — PTO combines sick leave and vacation time. It gives employees a set bank of time off at the beginning of each year. Employees can then choose whenever and however they want to use this time off.
Flexible work — Flexible work is a great way to help employees with mental health issues. This benefit can include flexible hours (selecting hours they will work), flexible schedule (selecting when they work) and flexible location (like telecommuting).
Besides health insurance and a 401(k) plan, other benefits that employees value highly are generous paid time off and flexible or remote work, according to a new survey.
But for the first time, the annual study by employee benefits provider Unum found that the younger generations are not on the same page with their older peers when it comes to what they value most in their benefits package.
“A multi-generational workforce is a huge benefit for companies,” said Liz Ahmed, executive vice president of People and Communications at Unum. “With the diversity of background, experiences, and thought employees bring, employers need to make sure there’s something in their benefits package for everyone’s different stage of life.”
Although the generations differ in their top three priorities, when opened to the top five, there is one common denominator: emergency savings.
Emergency savings
Sixty-four percent of employees surveyed said they do not have access to an emergency savings option through their employer. This benefit ranks third for boomers (25%), third for Gen X (32%) and second for Gen Z (37%).
Emergency savings plans can help prepare your employees for unexpected expenses — without dipping into retirement funds or using credit cards.
Employer-sponsored emergency savings accounts help workers save for financial emergencies by automatically deducting an amount from each paycheck and depositing it into a separate account. If they need to cover a bill or cash gets tight, they can draw from this fund to bridge a financial gap.
Also, with mental health support and resources high on the list for younger workers, employers may consider tapping an employee assistance program. EAPs are voluntary, work-based programs that offer free and confidential assessments, short-term counseling, referrals and follow-up services to employees who have personal and/or work-related problems.
You can use the following list as a general guidepost if you are considering adding voluntary benefits to your employee offerings.
These are the top 15 non-insurance benefits for U.S. workers:
Generous paid time off program
Flexible/remote work options
Paid family leave (for childcare or caring for an adult family member)
Mental health resources/support
Emergency savings
Professional development
Financial planning resources
Fitness or healthy-lifestyle incentives
ID theft prevention
Gym membership or onsite fitness center
Student loan repayment benefits
Pet-friendly offices
Personalized health coaching
Sabbatical leave
Dedicated volunteer hours.
A final thought
There are so many voluntary benefits to choose from that it’s important that you opt for ones that your employees actually want. A good way to gauge their interest is to conduct your own survey by asking them which benefits they would like to see and offering them a list to choose from.
Despite group health insurance costs expected to rise 5.4% this year, the tight labor market is forcing employers to prioritize enhancing benefits over cost-cutting measures, according to a new report by Mercer.
With Americans increasingly struggling to pay their health care bills, more employers are shying away from only offering their workers high-deductible health plans (HDHPs) that reduce premiums up front for higher out-of-pocket costs for workers.
Also, with mental health a top concern for workers, employers are seeking out benefits and plans that include virtual mental health services to make it easier to access care.
The expected health insurance cost growth of 5.4% is still less than general inflation, which was averaging just a tad below 8% in 2022. Because of high inflation, employers should be prepared for continued accelerated cost growth in 2024 and beyond, according to Mercer.
What employers are doing
With the tight labor market and health insurance benefits high on employees’ demands, employers are focusing on:
Enhancing benefits to improve attraction and retention (84% of large employers cited this as “important” or “very important”).
Adding programs/services to expand access to behavioral health care and mental health services (73% said this was important or very important).
Improving health care affordability (68%).
Enhancing benefits/resources to support women’s reproductive health (55%).
That’s not to say that employers are not concerned about costs. Instead, they are tackling it in different ways than in the past.
“Given the focus on affordability, it is not surprising that, despite expectations of higher healthcare costs, most leaders are avoiding ‘healthcare cost shifting,’ or giving plan members more responsibility for the cost of health services through higher deductibles or copays,” Mercer wrote.
It added that there was little change in the median amount of these cost-sharing features in 2022.
Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, employers were shifting workers to HDHPs to reduce their costs, but while employees enjoy lower premiums with these plans, if they need care they will pay more out of pocket.
Mercer found that fewer large employers are offering only HDHPs than in past years. Very large organizations (20,000 or more employees) had been adopting these plans with gusto until 2018, when 22% of them offered an HDHP as the only option for their employees. That fell to 13% in 2021 and was only 9% in 2022.
Instead, more employers were using salary-based premiums in 2022 (34%, up from 29% in 2021). Under these arrangements, lower-wage workers have smaller paycheck deductions for health coverage than those with higher salaries.
Cost-cutting
Employers are instead looking at other ways to cut costs for themselves and their employees. The Mercer study found that:
35% of large employers are steering employees to high-performing provider networks and other sources of high-value care.
36% of large employers offer telephonic navigation and advocacy service to help members find the right provider based on quality and cost.
17 % offer digital navigation.
24% are focusing on managing costs of specialty drugs.
23% are working with their carriers and pharmacy benefits managers on cost and clinical management strategies.
As more health services are being rendered through providers’ patient portals and telemedicine, some providers are starting to bill for some of those interactions.
A number of health systems around the country have started billing for certain types of messages, largely ones that are involved in clinical assessments or medical history reviews that take more than five minutes. Those costs will be passed on to health plan enrollees — likely in the form of copays or coinsurance — and insurers.
Online and app-based portals have become increasingly popular, particularly since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, as more people grow accustomed to not seeing their doctor face to face for every visit. Often these portals will allow the health plan enrollee to ask their care team questions, and that’s when providers say they are not being paid for their time.
Is a new trend starting?
Patient portals were seeing little usage prior to the pandemic, which spurred demand as patients and providers needed a solution that didn’t require in-person interactions. Studies have shown that more than 80% of patients used telehealth at least once since the start of the pandemic, up from about 10% prior to 2020.
These portals also sometimes obviated the need even for a tele-visit with a doctor and opened the door for patients to message their doctor directly.
The issue recently came to the fore when Cleveland Clinic and a handful of other medical centers started charging for this service.
Cleveland Clinic in November 2022 said it would start billing patients’ insurance companies for messages requiring at least five minutes of health care providers’ time to answer.
What will it cost?
Sending messages could cost as much as $50 per message depending on the time and skill necessary to answer the request. According to the announcement, people with individual or employer-sponsored group health insurance may be billed an average of $33 to $50 for each message taking more than five minutes.
In announcing the new charges, Cleveland Clinic wrote: “Over the last few years, virtual options have played a bigger role in our lives. And since 2019, the amount of messages providers have been answering has doubled.”
According to a report in Becker’s Health IT, seven more large health systems around the country have also started billing for some patient portal services: Northshore University Health System in Evanston, Illinois; Northwestern Medicine in Chicago; Chicago-based Lurie’s Children’s Hospital; San Francisco-based UCSF Health; Renton, Washington-based Providence; and UW Medicine and Fred Hutch Cancer Center, which both have their headquarters in Seattle.
These hospitals say they will only bill for certain messages, such as those concerning:
Changes to a patient’s medications.
New symptoms the patient may be experiencing.
Changes to a long-term condition.
Check-ups on long-term condition care.
Requests to complete medical forms.
Messages may provide information on a treatment plan or recommend that the patient get a test done or schedule an appointment with a specialist. Doctors may often refer to the patient’s medical history and review their records for these communications, for example.
The providers say that other services on portals will remain free, such as:
Scheduling appointments.
Getting a prescription refilled.
Asking a question that leads to an appointment.
Asking a question about an issue the patient saw their provider for recently.
Checking in as a part of follow-up care after a procedure, such as a colonoscopy.
A patient giving a quick update to their doctor.
Experts predict that as more health services gravitate towards providers’ portals, hospitals and doctors will look to generate revenue from these services.
As many as 9 million surprise medical bills have been prevented since January 2022 due to the impact of the No Surprises Act, according to a new report.
This is the first data that indicates the law, aimed at eliminating surprise medical billing for insured patients getting emergency treatment, is working. The number of claims subject to protections of the law have far exceeded the federal government’s initial prediction, the report by AHIP Health Policy & Markets Forum and the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association found.
If you have not made your employees aware of this groundbreaking law, you should, as Americans are tagged with billions of dollars a year in surprise bills when they go out of network, even if they don’t know it.
Often these bills come after going to an in-network hospital but either the doctor, the lab or the anesthesiologist were out of network.
Surprise billing is also common in medical emergencies, when an ambulance takes a patient to the closest ER – and frequently at a hospital that’s not in the patient’s network. The patient is normally in no condition to check his or her plan for in-network providers.
The No Surprises Act
Beginning on Jan. 1, 2022, the No Surprises Act banned surprise medical billing in most instances. The purpose of the law was to reduce surprise medical billing for insured patients receiving emergency treatment.
However, the law provides patients additional rights in some non-emergency situations, as well.
To help control your employees’ medical costs, it’s a good idea for plan sponsors to make sure workers and their families understand how the law works, so they can assert their rights under the act.
Emergency services
The act prohibits in-network hospitals and other providers from billing patients for any out-of-network charges for emergency services. The most the in-network provider can bill the patient for is their plan’s maximum in-network cost-sharing amounts.
So, if a patient is admitted to the ER and they must have an emergency surgery, and the surgeon or anesthesiologist is out of network, the hospital cannot bill the patient any more than they would have billed them had the surgeon or anesthesiologist been in the plan’s network.
Patients must still pay their deductible, copays and co-insurance amounts.
Providers cannot bill patients with insurance for anything beyond that.
Uninsured patients
Patients who are uninsured, or who are self-paying for care scheduled in advance (i.e., non-emergency care), are entitled to a “good faith estimate” from their providers.
If the patient gets a bill for anything more than that estimate, plus $400, they have 120 days from receipt to contest the bill.
Waiving rights
Some providers may ask your employees to sign a document that waives their rights under the law. However, the No Surprises Act prohibits waivers for any of these services:
Emergency care
Unforeseen urgent medical needs during non-emergency care
Ancillary services
Hospitalist charges
Assistant surgeon charges
Out-of-network provider services when no in-network alternative is available
Diagnostic services.
Key points for covered employees
You are not required to waive your rights under the No Surprises Act.
You are not required to use out-of-network providers. You can seek non-emergency care in-network.
Your plan must cover emergency services without requiring preauthorization.
Your plan must cover emergency services by out-of-network providers.
Your plan must apply any amounts you pay for emergency or out-of-network services towards your deductible and out-of-pocket limits.
More employers are opting to fund accounts that their employees can draw on to purchase their own health insurance, either on an Affordable Care Act exchange or on the open individual market, according to a new report.
Individual Coverage Health Reimbursement Arrangements (ICHRAs) offer employees a set budget for premiums, allowing them to pick the health care plan that works best for them.
Some companies have been exploring these arrangements in lieu of providing their group health benefits, in order to save money and reduce the administrative burden, according to the “2022 ICHRA Report” by PeopleKeep, a human resources software company.
The average amount employers funded ICHRAs with was $981 per employee in the year ended June 30, 2022, according to the report. That is twice as much that’s needed to purchase the average lowest-cost gold plan on the marketplace.
But these plans have their drawbacks and are not for all employers. So, it’s important to understand how they work and their limitations.
The ICHRA explained
ICHRAs, created by regulations promulgated by the IRS in 2019, allow employers subject to ACA coverage requirements to forgo purchasing insurance for employees and instead provide extra funds for them to purchase their own health insurance coverage. Here are some ICHRA basics:
Regulations allow for employers to offer ICHRAs to some of their employees, and group health benefits to others.
Some accounts are restricted to reimbursing only for health insurance premiums, while others also reimburse for out-of-pocket medical expenses. Unspent funds can be saved over the course of the pay period for expenses in the calendar year.
Every pay period, the employer will fund the account with a set amount over the course of the year. The employee will pay for their premiums and get reimbursed by showing proof of payment.
Employees don’t pay taxes on health care spending reimbursed through the ICHRA.
Accounts are not portable when employment ends.
For applicable large employers subject to the ACA employer mandate, the ICHRA funding must meet the ACA’s coverage and affordability requirements and be enough to purchase the lowest-cost silver plan on the marketplace.
There is no limit on how much an employer can fund the account with.
Not a good fit for all firms
There are many restrictions to ICHRAs as well as drawbacks which employers need to consider:
The employee loses the employer-sponsored coverage they’re accustomed to and has to fend for themselves to find coverage that fits within the budget their employer provides. This could cause employee resentment.
Offering group health plans to salaried employees and higher-wage staff and ICHRAs to lower-wage workers, who may view it as a two-tier system, could again cause resentment.
Having an ICHRA could affect recruitment efforts and retention, as most workers have grown accustomed to their group health benefits.
Employees may choose plans that leave them with either higher premiums than they’d pay for a group plan, or higher out-of-pocket expenses on the back end.
Employees must use the funds to purchase health insurance and they may not be enrolled in their spouse’s health plan.
If your ICHRA is considered affordable according to ACA rules, employees lose the premium tax credit if they opt out of the ICHRA. If your ICHRA is considered unaffordable under ACA rules, they can claim the premium tax credit and waive their right to the ICHRA.
Businesses most suited for ICHRAs
These plans often work best for operations that have:
High staff turnover.
A large number of lower-paid workers.
A mix of salaried and hourly workers.
A mix of employees at the company site and remote workers in other regions.
The takeaway
Sticking with a traditional group health plan can help you with recruitment and retention, but for some employers who look to attract workers who do not put a priority on employee benefits, these types of plans could be a good fit.
Making a move to one of these plans takes careful consideration and planning. We can help you sort through the facts and fiction about these accounts.
