Our organization’s fully insured dental plan has become too expensive, despite manageable and predictable claims experience. Can USI help us lower our plan costs?
USI analyzes claims and carrier retention for incumbent dental plans to determine if self-insuring your organization’s dental benefit offerings would lower coverage costs. If self-insurance is feasible, the coverage will be marketed on that basis, resulting in the opportunity for significant savings.
Self-insuring your organization’s dental benefits could significantly reduce excess carrier profit and premium taxes by an estimated $80 - $125 per employee per year.
We’ve estimated the financial impact for you. Feel free to update the assumptions.
- Provides greater flexibility customize your plan design and network options
- Includes a complete review of contract terms to ensure the sustainability of a self-funded plan
- Makes it easier for your organization develop a multi-year cost control strategy with USI's help
Fully insured dental plans include significant fixed costs for margin, commissions, and marketing expenses, yet have very little financial risk given the high frequency and low severity of claims, making them highly suitable for self-insurance.
Employers who consider self-funding medical benefit plans “too risky” and should still consider self-funded dental options, given the relative rarity of high-severity claims.
Minimal risk given plan maximums – Since maximums are built into the plan, there is lower risk involved.
Cash flow and claims funding – The employer holds the reserves and only pays claims as they are incurred, which can provide immediate savings when claims are low.
Margin elimination – Carriers typically charge between 3% and 10% of premium for margin.
Similar to dental, vision and short-term disability have high-frequency and low-severity claims and can be highly suitable for self-insured plans. If you’d like us to perform an analysis, we’d just need 24-36 months of claims and enrollment data, the benefit designs, and the census data for these benefits.
I’d like to explore further how moving to a self-insured plan structure can help our organization reduce our dental benefit costs.
To get started, USI will need just a few pieces of information from your organization, including dental plan design(s) and certificates, the last 2-3 years of monthly claims and enrollment data (if available), and a recent dental census inclusive of all benefit eligibles indicating those enrolled in dental.