The Customer Service Survey
VocaLabs' weblog providing news and commentary on the challenges of providing good customer service.
Health Savings Accounts
Tuesday - January 08, 2008 04:13 PM in
At VocaLabs, we've always had fairly generous medical and dental coverage for employees. My philosophy is that, with our current system, you get more bang for your buck paying employees with good medical benefits than with actual dollars--if for no other reason than good coverage is relatively uncommon and rapidly becoming more so.
It looks like this may be the year we make the jump into a plan with high deductible medical coverage and a Health Savings Account. There are pros and cons, but it looks like we may be able to provide better coverage at a lower price (and less out-of-pocket expenses for employees) along with the opportunity for people to sock away some savings if all goes well.
The financial aspects are fairly well defined, even if we don't have all the answers yet: how much will it cost per person, how comparable is the coverage, what's the out-of-pocket expense, etc. On an aggregate basis (combining all employees and families, and looking at both the employee and employer contributions), it looks like we come out a couple thousand dollars ahead if we make the switch.
So the decision may come down to the nonfinancial aspects: what's the paperwork like, how do we file claims, what kinds of records do we need to keep, and so forth.
It's interesting that, like in so many other things, it probably won't come down to price in the end (that's my sneaky way of getting customer service into this entry).
Posted by Peter Leppik
The financial aspects are fairly well defined, even if we don't have all the answers yet: how much will it cost per person, how comparable is the coverage, what's the out-of-pocket expense, etc. On an aggregate basis (combining all employees and families, and looking at both the employee and employer contributions), it looks like we come out a couple thousand dollars ahead if we make the switch.
So the decision may come down to the nonfinancial aspects: what's the paperwork like, how do we file claims, what kinds of records do we need to keep, and so forth.
It's interesting that, like in so many other things, it probably won't come down to price in the end (that's my sneaky way of getting customer service into this entry).
Posted by Peter Leppik
Posted at 04:13 PM by | | | |