Self- Funding: Passport to Medical Tourism for US Employers

June 18 01:00 2014 by ushadmin

Most employers – even those confused about the legislative overhaul called Obamacare – understand that offering health insurance to their employees still makes good business sense. But, rising costs and evolving regulatory complexities – four years into the President’s signature domestic healthcare policy initiative – have made things perfectly clear to employers: engaging employees and keeping one eye on the bottom line and the other on the challenges of compliance is not an easy job.

Few entrepreneurs start a business to become experts on health insurance. From the outset, most employers understood – and many still do — that health insurance could be used as a tax-deductible form of compensation to attract and retain top employees. For years, that knowledge was good enough.

Then along came unaffordable premiums and, subsequently, healthcare reform. Everything changed.

Now, many employers say they don’t understand the Affordable Care Act and only one in three believe their human resource departments are fully prepared to navigate the often oblique healthcare landscape.1 Obamacare has no doubt altered the way employers look at employee healthcare benefits and feel about their insurance offerings. Employers, for the most part, are dissatisfied with the value they receive in return for the investment they make in the health of their employees.

To many, the healthcare system in its current state is underperforming, expensive and wasteful. Employers feel their needs are not being met. A swell of legal and financial hurdles have overwhelmed and pushed companies of all sizes to search for innovative solutions and meaningful strategies to get the most out of every dollar spent on their employee healthcare benefit plans. Solutions, to these anxious employers, are imperative for balancing a commitment to their employees with the stark realities of keeping their financial investment solvent…