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A new study from Arthur J. Gallagher & Co. reports that self-insurance is on the rise across the employer spectrum, including lower midsize, upper midsize and large employers. The rate of employers self-insuring has increased between 8 and 10 percent since 2016, the study found.

This trend is expected to continue as costs associated with traditional,fully-insured plans become prohibitively expensive, especially for small and midsize employers. The big benefit of self-insurance is the savings potential. Because employers pay the claims, they reap the benefit of low-claim years. Additionally there are also blended options, where employers can take on less risk and still benefit in low-claim years while minimizing risk in high-claim years.

Employers are also evaluating other options for cost-containment. Some of the tactics organizations expect to adopt by 2019 include cost-transparency tools, healthcare decision support and reference-based pricing for healthcare services. Bernard Health has more than a decade of experience helping employers adopt these and other strategies to create sustainable benefit plans.

In our experience, we’ve found that self-insuring is an option for employers with as few as 25 employees. Concerned your organization can’t withstand a bad month of claims, or worried about losing your insurance network? Learn more about why these self-insurance myths shouldn’t keep you from considering alternate funding methods here. Bernard Health clients also have access to BerniePortal, an industry-leading benefits and HR platform, which provides both cost-transparency and decision support tools to help employees make cost-effective decisions around their benefits. To learn more about how Bernard Health and BerniePortal and improve your benefits plan, click below.