Economic factors are turning 2024 into a potentially rough year financially for employees. Healthcare costs are expected to rise and employers are planning to scale back on raises and promotions, with many not even planning on a cost-of-living increase.

This double whammy will effectively reduce employee net compensation and disposable income. Despite the downside for retention, many employers seem willing to take this risk. Key findings of a recent survey of 600 business leaders revealed:

• 26% of companies will not or may not give raises next year
• Half of companies giving raises say less than half of employees will receive one
• 52% of business leaders anticipate layoffs in 2024

Employers need to do everything possible to ensure their compensation and benefits packages remain competitive. Offering a member-first health plan from Vitori Health is a smart strategy for achieving cost control and employee retention goals.

• Vitori’s less costly, more compassionate health plan delivers better benefits to more satisfied members with 80+ Net Promoter scores and 30% lower health plan costs. Savvy employers can reinvest their savings in cost of living increases, helping employees save for retirement, and other benefit enhancements.

• Vitori Vantage, the industry’s first 3-year level premium health plan, eliminates the unpredictability of rising annual healthcare expenses. Vantage stabilizes cash flow and helps employers budget for strategic workforce investments.

Employers tethered to legacy insurance carriers with uncontrolled healthcare costs are giving up competitive advantage with fewer options for improving employee pay and benefits. It’s time to take a modern approach to employer sponsored healthcare that boosts employee satisfaction while successfully reducing plan costs.

It is abundantly clear that employers need to break free from fully-insured health plans with legacy insurance carriers. Premiums spiral higher with every renewal, and employees and their families are increasingly exposed to devastating denials of care and coverage… all in the pursuit of greater profit.

Despite laws to the contrary, insurers create the illusion of coverage while finding loopholes to avoid providing actual care. In its series on how the insurance industry routinely denies coverage to patients, ProPublica exposes the system’s inner workings and how it harms the people it purports to help.

For one patient, denial of cancer care had tragic results that sadly, could happen to any employee covered by a traditional, fully-insured health plan. The good news is that employers can break free from this profit-driven corruption by moving to a self-funded or 3-year level-funded health plan from Vitori Health.

Vitori removes the risk of legacy plans that cede all power to the insurance company by providing greater control over coverage and care. It also offers upwards of 30% in savings and includes low and no-cost care options to covered members.

Employers can provide real health care coverage to their valued employees.

2 minHealthcare costs are spiking to record levels and burdening the nation’s employers. Significant portions of premium dollars pay for inpatient hospital services, with employers paying 200% or more of Medicare prices. “Plan sponsors as plan fiduciaries have to take action. They can’t just stand for it.”

So says Michael Thompson, president and chief executive officer of the National Alliance of Healthcare Purchaser Coalitions (National Alliance), whose playbook supports employers’ claims that hospital prices are unreasonable and unsustainable. It also urges employers to take more responsibility for negotiations.

While very large employers might have the wherewithal to navigate reimbursement discussions with hospitals and health systems, it’s like asking patients to be cost-effective healthcare shoppers in an opaque and foreign healthcare economy: much easier said than done.

The legacy health insurance carriers have done almost nothing to address hospital cost relief for decades. In fact, BUCA contracts with hospitals perpetuate the cost escalation, allowing hospitals to charge whatever they want with little oversight while insurance carrier profits increase along with rising hospital charges.

Reference-based pricing (RBP) is often touted as an alternative because it caps costs at a negotiated percentage above the baseline Medicare price. The downside is that RBP’s overly simplistic reimbursement method and combative stance with providers routinely results in contested claims payments. Employees bear the brunt of this friction with balance bills that increase their medical costs and create financial uncertainty.

Achieving Fair Pricing with Fair Market Payment™

Vitori Health removes the unrealistic expectation of hospital price negotiation from employers and their health plan participants with its exclusive Fair Market Payment™ algorithm that determines appropriate claim payments honored by providers without friction. This unique and sophisticated approach drives significant health plan savings while delivering an exceptional member experience.

A nationwide analysis of plan performance reveals that:

• 98.8% of Vitori FMP reimbursements are paid by providers without question. Claims with extenuating clinical circumstances may warrant an easily administered reimbursement adjustment. BUCA insurers and RBP plans regularly deny and delay a much larger percentage of claims, frustrating providers.
• Less than 0.24% of Vitori claims have an unexpected member bill compared to BUCA and RBP plans, which have 10-40 times higher rate of unexpected member billing.

A modern, member-first health plan with advanced technology can effectively counteract today’s skyrocketing hospital and healthcare costs. Employers can realize 30% savings with industry-leading plan advantages and unprecedented 80+ Net Promoter member satisfaction scores.