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Thanks
to all of you who have inquired about The Foraker Group Benefit Plan.
We believe this innovative approach to health care is the right answer to
help control costs and improve the well being of people in our sector.
Recently we have had a series of discussions with you about the program, and
several questions have come up fairly often. We hope the points below
will provide additional information and explanations on how the program will
work.
Rasmuson Foundation Incentives - the
Health Savings Account (HSA)
The Rasmuson
Foundation generously supports the plan through incentives that encourage
early enrollment -- creating additional value to your employee's benefit
program. Your organization will receive a cash contribution via Foraker
of $250 per employee per year to be contributed to each participating
employee's HSA for the first two years of this initiative ($500 total).
This incentive is only available for the first 2,000 employees who enroll in
the Heritage Select High Deductible Health Plan with an HSA.
How It Works
The Health Savings
Account request form from Foraker will be available for enrollment beginning
January 1, 2009. The enrolled organization will request a check from
The Foraker Group by providing the total number of qualified participants in
the High Deductible health insurance program. For example, if the
organization has six enrolled employees, then a request will be made for a
total of $1500 (6 employees at $250 each) for the first year of
enrollment. The organization must make that request prior to the
end of the group's contract year. For example, if you enrolled in
October 2008, your request must be submitted by October 2009. Once
you have made your request, you cannot make another if you experience
turnover with your staff. Only if your staff grows within the
contract year can you make one more request.
During the second
year of the incentive, organizations will again submit the total number of
qualified participants in the health insurance program. If the organization
has had an increase in participants, a request for more can be made. If
the organization has had a decrease in participants, they may still request
the same amount as their first year incentive. For example, if you
submitted ten employees the first year of enrollment, but only have six now
enrolled, you may still request the incentive for ten employees. Of
course, any additional monies received over the number of actual employees
enrolled must go towards the Health Savings Account of those participating -
to be divided equally among them.
Each qualifying
organization will be able to determine how it distributes this incentive to
the employee, either by pay period, monthly, quarterly, annually. But
it must be placed in the employees' HSA. Because of the portability of
the HSA account, an employee who leaves the organization will be able to take
with them whatever funds have been contributed on their
behalf.
Please remember,
our objective is not only to be a competitive, sustainable benefit program,
but also to provide tools for you and your employees to become more aware of
your health and thus, create a healthier workforce. In doing this, not
only will your health insurance premiums decrease from their current trend,
but absenteeism and workers compensation claims will decrease. Simply
stated, no downside exists to this program.
Click
here to download the request form.
Thank you,
The Foraker Group
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