Employees Really Value Vision and Dental
All the major California group health carriers
now offer dental and vision insurance plans that
you can add to the health insurance plan of your
choice (or your employee's choice such as with
EmployeeElect through Blue Cross). There are now
a full range of type of plans and price points
on the market. HMO, PPO, and sometimes Indemnity
group dental plans are now available. As for
Vision, there are also multiple stand-alone
plans or riders that can be added. You can
usually mix and match where you might have an
HMO health plan and a PPO dental plan to
accommodate your doctor and dentist selection by
network. Let's take a look at how these benefits
both impact and are valued by California
employees.
The perceived value of Dental and Vision group
benefits
It's very interesting. California health
insurance protects employees from potentially
very large bills...100's of thousands in fact.
Dental and vision does not protect from this
degree of risk but is more utilitarian...people
are more likely to use it...and more often.
Because of this, employees really value their
dental and vision coverage even with the
disparity in protection.
Health insurance is definitely more important,
but dental and vision are more LIKED!
It partially depends on the type of employee a
company is looking to attract but across the
board, this seems to be the case. With employees
leaving larger companies or government to come
to a California small group, they partially
expect the benefit because it is so commonplace
in those venues. It is part of a suite of
benefits that the employee feels very
comfortable with. The good news is that health
insurance is by far the most expensive part of
this suite. Group dental insurance can be priced
very well with a broad range of options and
price-points while Vision is very in-expensive.
It almost makes sense to offer the coverage for
the "feel good" effect it has with employees
even in conjunction with slightly less medical
benefits.
Eligibility requirements for Dental and Vision
Small Group dental eligibility is the same as
that for California group health insurance. The
three main requirements according to AB 1672 is
that the group have at least 2 people formally
tied to the company, has 75% participation of
eligible employees, and pays at least 50% of the
employees premium. There are Voluntary dental
plans where the employee pays their own premium
and only a certain number or percentage of
employees must enroll for the group to offer
this coverage. It's essentially an
individual/family plan that is conveniently
grouped under the umbrella of a group setting.
Vision usually requires 100% participation,
otherwise, the only people who would enroll are
those that need vision benefits. This would
quickly make the insurance as expensive as what
it is trying to protect against.
Dental and Vision providers in California group
market
Each carrier offers their own dental and
sometimes vision options. Dental and vision tend
to be commodities which means that they are very
similar in benefits and rates from carrier to
carrier. Apples and apples, it probably makes
sense to wrap the dental and vision up with the
insurance carrier you have chosen for health
benefits. The one difference that might affect
your decision is network. Networks for dentists
such as PPO and HMO have been very difficult as
they are not very broad. This trend will
probably continue as more dentists are dropping
off of networks. Indemnity plans do not have
this problem since they pay out for all carriers
and do not have a list of providers. They also
tend to be more expensive due to this.
We look at Delta Dental or VSP Vision for groups
where their dentists (which they want to stay
with) are not on other networks. Delta and VSP
are strong carriers in their respective plan
types and might be an option in this situation.
You can also choose a richer PPO plan with
better out-of-network benefits. Otherwise, the
other California health carriers do a good job
with either option.
Other important concepts to help you
understand your California group dental and
vision insurance quote are:
Small Group dental insurance
Why
offer Small Group health insurance
Again, there is absolutely no
cost to you for our services. Call 800-320-6269 Today!