You don't. Businesses that don't have enough information
are not able to make any changes. They are forced to wait. Waiting
doesn't create changes. It may give you more time to gather information,
but simply waiting is not a very progressive strategy.
When it
comes to health insurance, the waiting strategy seems to be the norm.
Just because it's the norm doesn't mean that it's a good strategy. In
fact, it's not a strategy at all. What most businesses are doing today
is actually the opposite of strategic. They simply wait for the renewal
each year and pay it. They usually add some complaints and specific
words about the costs, but that is after the fact and therefore, does
them no good.
In any area of business, not having a strategy is a
difficult way to make changes. In the area of health insurance, not
having a strategy is actually an easy way to make changes. The problem
is that they are not the changes your business wants. The only changes
you see are increases in price.
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This change is not the one that
they were hoping for. The change is what they are hoping does NOT happen
when they sign the year's insurance agreement. Even though, this is one
thing that is certain to happen when they fail to take action.
What
action do companies need to take? It's actually much simpler than they
are making it. Many companies are having trouble understanding insurance
plans, healthcare and healthcare reform. I understand this confusion
because there is a lot to think about. The beauty of health insurance
within a business is that you don't need to worry about any of this.
The
only thing that companies need to worry about is employee health. When
employees are healthy, medical use is less frequent, when medical use is
infrequent, insurance is less expensive. If you keep your healthy
employees healthy and get some of your unhealthy employees to become
healthier, your insurance costs will go down. It's that simple.

The
action that successful companies are taking now is to proactively
manage their healthcare plans by improving employee health. By focusing
on health, they are able to get ahead of the cost increases and actually
avoid them all together. The cost increases that most companies are
seeing each year are not because of the big-bad insurance companies. The
cost increases are clearly tied to the health decrease that is sweeping
the nation.
That is a fact that you need to understand to be
successful in business. When analyzing any area of business, you need to
know the facts in order to act. If you don't know the facts, you can't
act confidently. It's one thing to simply not have all of the facts in
front of you. It is another thing entirely to refuse to see the facts
that are in front of you.
This is what many companies are doing by
simply paying more for health insurance each year. If you don't look at
the reasons for this increase or look for an alternative, you are
basically saying that you have no choice and spending more money on
purpose. Does this sound like good business? I don't think so.
That
is why so many businesses are now facing the facts and realizing that
healthcare costs are in their hands. Employee health is a system within
your business. Just as you monitor expenses and apply maintenance
practices in other areas of business, you need to do the same for health
insurance. Employee health is the maintenance for your health insurance
plan. The better you monitor health and promote healthy behavior, the
more control your company has over healthcare costs.
Business Health Expert Joe Byrd uses his passion and expertise to
bring business and health together. He integrates health education in
lifestyle topics such as Stress Management, Weight Management, and
Smoking Cessation into businesses in order to improve employee health
and healthy cultures that save companies money.