20% increase in health care costs - Associate Allianz Partners Employee Review

Thanks so much for your review. Like many companies, each year we spend many months reviewing our healthcare benefits, generally finalizing the decisions toward the end of September, which gives us time for communication and educational sessions before Open Enrollment begins in November. Those decisions take many factors into consideration—even when we stay with the same provider as we did this year. In 2015, we’ll offer two medical plans--the more traditional medical plan you mention, which indeed did have a premium increase that was absorbed mostly by the company. In addition, we’ll offer a high-deductible plan (HDHP), in which there was no premium increase (plus the company increased the contribution to the associated health savings account to help offset out-of-pocket costs). Companies are increasingly including HDHPs in their benefit packages, as they are cost-effective, efficient and help control rising healthcare costs for both associates and the company. If you’d like to know more about the options and how we make decisions about our Total Rewards package, please stop by the HR department any time.