insurance rebates

[bettyandbob]

In light of all the discussion of rising insurance costs, I hope someone here is getting one of these rebates. It says most are going to corporations and it says further that said corporations do not have to pass said rebates to workers. Didn't most of the workers pay into those premiums. That stinks.

 

http://www.wtop.com/267/2843070/Report-Rebates-from-health-care-law-will-top-1B

 

It really annoys me that there are rebates at all. It makes me mad that the insurance companies have premiums so high that the govt has to look over their shoulder to check whether or not the money is actually being spent on healthcare. And apparently a significant percent is not being spent on health care.

[OLG]

Hope it's not like the rebate we got a year or so ago from the house insurance company....the following year they increased the cost of the policy by triple the rebate! Trust no insurance company even with government so-called oversight, I think.

[StephanieZ]

Yep, our small business got rebates at the end of last calendar year. It was about a month's premium or so. Maybe 6 weeks. We had the option as to what to do with them. We did pass along the savings to our employees and to ourselves proportionately to our shares of the premiums. In essense, we all (corp & employees) got a month or so w/o no premiums. It was AWESOME, and at the end of the year, it allowed us to give nicer Christmas bonuses to the staff too, so they got a month (or so) w/ no premiums, plus a nice bonus.

 

It was AWESOME.

 

(I can see why it would be hard to pass along savings to employees if you had a very large business. The rebates were based on the entire calendar year's premiums. If you have had much turnover during the year, it could be very confusing calculating who would get what. We are small enough that we could figure it out pretty easily -- and just gave everyone who'd been on insurance for more than a few months (nearly everyone) the month of free premuims. But, the numbers on the rebates are inexact, and we surely weren't going to mail a check to someone who no longer worked for us . . . If the corp. was required to pass along savings, it would be VERY complicated to do the calculations for a large corp, and it would likely cost the corp. more in staff/accounting time than anyone saved.)

[StephanieZ]

ps. Not only did our rates not go up a bunch this year, but they actually stayed the SAME for the new year (beginning May 1) for the new year. I figure the ins. cos don't have a big incentive to raise our rates more than they spend since they have to refund the excess anyway. Works for us!! YAY!! (And, that is NOT a feeling I've had about insurance very often!)

 

pps. AND, our rates are staying the same (low) despite our benefits IMPROVING due to the health reform laws. Many preventive health care items (vaccines, wellness visits, mamograms, etc) are now 100% paid for with no deductible.