Terpstra Benefits Insurance Solutions
Squarespace-Banner-2.png

Small Employers

Employer? Learn More.

NEWSROOM

Listen to Scott discuss the small business group health insurance dilemma with host Tom Sullivan (featured October 24th on Fox News Radio)


Replacing Group Health Plans with Individual Plans

Why would an employer want to use individual health plans instead of a group plan?
Watch these videos for the revealing story!

REASON # 1: It costs a lot less

The chart below illustrates a sample of identical plans. On average, the individual plan rates are 20% less.  By eliminating a group health plan, many employees now become eligible for even lower rates.  Via the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare), many employees become eligible for advanced tax credits, lowering their cost even more. The plan below is for the Blue Shield PPO $2,000 deductible plan. These types of savings are indicative of the amount of savings you can expect to receive by using individual plans in place of group plans.

REASON # 2: More flexibility

Group health plans have many rules associated with them.  Individual plans do not. Employers no longer have to worry about how much they need to contribute, minimum participation rules, selecting the right insurance company or which plan(s) to offer.

REASON #3: Guarantee issue

The reason why group plans have been appealing in the past… everyone who signed up (including spouses and dependent children) got the insurance regardless of any pre-existing health conditions.  That was not the case with individual health plans, people could be turned down.  Well, as of January 1, 2014, everyone who applies, for an individual plan, gets the same rate with no pre-existing conditions.

REASON # 4: Attract and keep good employees

In the past, offering an array of employee benefits was an excellent way to find and keep good employees.  With runaway rate increases, employers have pushed much of the cost back on their employees making it unaffordable.  Group health plans have now become a hinderance for employers.  By lowering an employer’s health plan expense dramatically, they now have dollars to help offer other valuable benefits.

How to Control Cost and Still Provide Great Benefits

Spiraling Health Care Costs are forcing many employers to drop or reduce benefits for their workforce.  This can be a tough and unpopular decision.  There is a better alternative.  Drop your group health.  Provide your employees with a fixed amount of dollars (“Defined Contribution”) to spend that meets your budget and let them buy the plan(s) they want.

OFFER A WIDE ARRAY OF BENEFITS

Attract and retain great talent

Recruiting can be an expensive drain on resources and inhibit growth and excellent customer service.  By offering a full array of benefits powered by the contracts negotiated by Terpstra Benefits, employers can offer a comprehensive range of benefits at a predictable fixed cost – a key asset for attracting and retaining the talent you need to be successful. 

SAVE TIME AND MONEY WITH A PROFESSIONAL ENROLLMENT TEAM

Reduce administration overhead

Traditional paper-based shopping and enrollment can be a drain on your administrative resources especially for smaller companies.  Terpstra Benefits’ system streamlines the entire process reducing your administrative burden… saving you time and money.

SHOP IN A STATE-OF-THE-ART BENEFITS INSURANCE STORE

Employees can choose the products that best meet their needs.

In stark contrast to “One size fits all” traditional group plans employees using the Terpstra Benefits Mymarketplace employees can shop for the products that best suit their needs and budget.  Using the one-on-one assistance of our professional enrollers helping them understand the plans while staying within their budget.

WHO WE ARE AND WHAT WE ARE ABOUT

Scott Terpstra, owner and founder, is a 36-year veteran in the health and employee benefit insurance arena.  He has extensive background in virtually all forms of employee benefits. Small and large employer group plans and self-insured health plans. He has owned and managed underwriting and administration companies and has been instrumental in the start-up of several new companies and has also has extensive knowledge in flexible compensation ( FSAs, HRAs and HSAs). The passage of the Affordable Care Act (i.e. Obama Care), will change the landscape of employee benefits radically. Terpstra Benefits was started to deliver small employers all of the advantages that the Affordable Care Act has provided.

What the experts say…

One the nation’s largest and most prestigious consulting firms (Oliver Wyman¹) made this statement: “The implementation of the lawand particularly the opening of state healthcare exchanges- will set in motion a great migration of American consumers toward a new model of insurance.  We anticipate that eventually nearly half of the commercial market (80-100 million) will obtain their health insurance in the form of individually purchased coverage.  This market will be fundamentally different from the employer oriented market that dominates healthcare today.

They went on to say, “The 2010 Affordable Care Act introduced sweeping changes to both the insurance market and healthcare delivery systems.  Catalyzed by healthcare reform and increased employer adoption of defined contribution and insurance exchanges, the healthcare market is transitioning from an employer-centric “Wholesale” model to a more consumer-centric “retail” model.”

There is a better way!

Terpstra Benefits believes the current employer model of picking one insurance company for all employees is in the same category as the buggy whip business analogy².  Think about it, how has your employer sponsored group plan been doing?  In the last 15 years, the average monthly cost ³ of an average single health plan has risen from $189 to $476. An increase of 252%!  The average cost of a family plan has increased from $478 to $1,298/month.  An increase of 272%! All this while inflation has increase of just 40% during that same time. Terpstra Benefits has designed a system that enhances employee benefits.

¹ About Oliver Wyman

Oliver Wyman is a global leader in management consulting. With offices in 50+ cities across 25 countries, Oliver Wyman combines deep industry knowledge with specialized expertise in strategy, operations, risk management, organizational transformation, and leadership development. The firm’s 3,000 professionals help clients optimize their business, improve their operations and risk profile, and accelerate their organizational performance to seize the most attractive opportunities. Oliver Wyman is a wholly owned subsidiary of Marsh & McLennan Companies [NYSE: MCC]. Ranked #228 on the Fortune 500.

² Buggy Whip Business Analogy

Buggy whips are often cited in business cases as one of the industries that did not adapt with the advent of the automobile, and thus began the demise of the industry. The roots of the analogy can be traced to Theodore Levitt, a Harvard Business School professor. In 1960, he wrote about their plight in a Harvard Business Review article, “Marketing Myopia”; hundreds of thousands of reprints have been sold. Today, any line of business facing the life-or-death challenge of a digital age will be described, sooner or later, as a contemporary buggy whip maker.

³ Kaiser Family Foundation Annual Surveys

Our services include…

Terpstra Benefits is dedicated to the future and is not hanging on to the past.  Our entire agency is geared towards using individual health plans to replace group plans; while lowering costs dramatically and enhancing benefits at the same time. The following list provides an overview of what to expect from Terpstra Benefits:

  1. Help for employers to decide if this new method works ( the vast majority of the time it saves 10’s of thousands of dollars).  We have developed proprietary software to help make this process clear and accurate
  2. Help employers set a budget
  3. Council employees one-on-one to help them pick the plans that best meets their family’s needs and budget
  4. Terpstra Benefits performs all enrollment and billing
  5. On-going customer support for your employees.