Bruce Dunn
CEO
Mission Pools Inc.
Escondido, Calif.
Recently, we decided to put our health insurance out for bid. We’re now looking at annual savings of approximately $150,000.
For years, our insurance broker had us contracted with the same provider, and they’d always done a good job. But just as we were looking to reduce overhead, our provider increased premiums by 16 percent. We’d undergone a double-digit increase five or six years prior, and this was during a time when we needed to tighten the belt!
I firmly believe that each of my employees should have health insurance. I’ll do everything possible to not only cover them, but also to help provide health insurance for their families, as well as the kind of cafeteria plan that will help them with pretax dollars.
Regardless, we were going to continue offering coverage.
But we told our broker, “You guys aren’t getting it. You think we’re all crying wolf.”
Though he arranged for a meeting with our provider, they were only willing to drop to a 14 percent increase. So we put our insurance out to bid. And you know what? We found a new plan.
The biggest hitch is that some employees likely will have to see different doctors. But they still have health insurance, and they’re paying less out-of-pocket to cover their families.
We’ve signed on with the new carrier for a year. If our employees decide they don’t like it, we’ll re-evaluate the situation. But I really don’t see that being the case.
So we did something for the company, something for the individual and something for their families. It was a win-win for everyone — we didn’t receive a single complaint.
