If you are like most businesses, the rising cost of health insurance has put you in a difficult spot. Pay the increases and your overhead soars. Share the costs with employees and their take home pay goes down. By retaining a share of the risk, you can lower costs without reducing the benefit levels. One solution gaining in momentum is partial self-insurance.

"Mini" Self-Funded Plans
--- High Deductible Products

High Deductible Products are consumer-driven products that offer a powerful approach to controlling health care costs and offering benefits to both the employee and employer. They can take the form of “mini" self-funded plans such as FSAs, HRAs and HSAs and can bridge the gap between what is insured and not insured.

Partially Self-Funded Plans

With partial self-insurance, you would refine the approach in favor of a hybrid that combines your company's funds with policies written by a reinsurer. In a typical plan you would agree to a portion of the risk and secure coverage, reinsurance or stop-loss coverage that would provide a ceiling on what you could pay. This protection would limit your claims on any on large individual claim and on the total claims of the covered population. Within the partially self-funded retention you have a great deal of flexibility in regards to how you structure the benefits

Self-Insurance - taking a more active role in insurance, retaining part of the insurance risk and tailoring a coverage plan your specific needs - may hold the key to controlling rising health plan costs.