Health plan search is grim
Nonprofits are facing unique challenges when seeking health insurance coverage.
Shopping for a group health insurance plan for her employees has become a grim reality for Jennifer Schenk, the executive director of the High Country Conservation Center.
HC3 currently covers five employees, all of whom are under 35 and healthy. It costs $2,400 a month, or almost $29,000 a year, for their coverage. That’s a double-digit percentage increase from last year. What’s more, that same plan will cost 35 percent more next year, widening the huge hole in the small nonprofit’s already-tight budget by about $10,000 more. That is $10,000 less that HC3 has to spend on promoting conservation in Summit County, where nature is king.
Schenk’s situation is familiar to other Summit County nonprofits. While Summit residents and businesses pay among the nation’s highest health insurance premiums, nonprofits face unique challenges of their own. Higher premiums take bigger bites out of smaller budgets. They make it that much harder for these organizations to strike a sustainable balance between serving the community and taking care of their employees, and the situation gets worse very year.
Tamara Drangstveit is executive director of the Family and Intercultural Resource Center (FIRC), a nonprofit providing health and human services to Summit residents, including parental education, cultural integration programs, food banks, housing assistance and other resources.
Premium increases are taking bigger and bigger chunks out of the budget, leaving behind less money for direct services to the community. Drangstveit said that by her estimation, she could hire five more employees with the money she’ll spend on insurance premiums. In fact, one service provided by FIRC is to help Summit families find affordable health insurance, demonstrating how rising premiums are having a domino effect across the community and compounding the problem.
As costs balloon, nonprofits are having a harder time balancing the needs of the community and their employees. To try to restore that balance, they seek cheaper plans. That often means much higher deductibles, lower or no co-pays for doctor visits and much more restrictive networks. Drangstveit and Schenk estimate their employees must fulfill deductibles from $5,000 to $7,000 before insurance kicks in. That often results in employees not even bothering to go to a doctor or otherwise use their health benefits unless they have an emergency.
The reality of skyrocketing premiums might make some small businesses wonder whether it is worth providing health insurance at all. Under the Affordable Care Act, most businesses with fewer than 50 full-time employees are not required to provide health insurance options. Perfectly legal, no penalty, and a whole lot of money saved.