What your Employer is doing for you
Health Insurance plans through the employer is relatively new. According to Mercer, employer sponsored health insurance plans weren’t offered until after World War II and only came about as a way for employers to compete for scarce labor.
Now these health insurance benefits from employers are offered (and expected) as part of the package when you are hired at most jobs.
It seems like right now with budgets decreasing that employers would be cutting corners on things like health insurance. And although employers right now have several reasons to decrease their current health benefits including: administrative burdens, compliance risks, competitive disadvantages in the global marketplace and even increased costs, cutting back isn’t happening at all.
According to Mercer, there are many reasons for their interest in your health plans.
- Employers see health insurance plans as a tool of competition against other companies to help attract and keep their employees. With health insurance coverage being part of the overall package when being hired, potential employees will compare your benefits being offered to another job that they may be applying for as well.
- Keeping their employees healthy and happy allows the company to look good to not only their current clients, but futures ones as well and the competition. When employees are feeling good and healthy they tend to work better and more productively and also in a better mood. This reflects on not only that person, but also the company that they are working for and shows to potential customers or clients that they love their job and that this is a business worth coming to or investing in.
- Favorable tax treatment under the current law is given to those companies and employers that provide their workers with health insurance.
- Companies with better health plans often have workers that get treated quickly and efficiently and take less sick days, which increases both their employee’s health as well as the productivity at the workplace.
- And even when there aren’t any business benefits to improving health care plans for employees, employers still feel morally responsible in watching out for their workers. They believe that providing them with health care is considered ‘the right thing’ to do. Keep in mind that employers also need benefits and are in basically the same boat that you are, so they want to have benefits like you do.
So even in the face of economic downfall that is happening right now, it seems that health insurance coverage is something that employers are just not ready to cut back on yet. This is good news for us and we need to enjoy it while we still have it.