Let’s talk about employees aged 60 and older that are typically looking forward to retirement. They have spent the majority of their life doing the job that they were hired to do and undoubtedly did it well, but they are going to walk out the door with a whole new assignment.

The new assignment that will be so foreign to them is how to take care of their health insurance, their dental insurance, their 401(k) and things that have been provided through their employment as benefits. It’s like walking onto the stage without your script – you’re lost!

Sears Insurance would like to serve as your transition partner in taking your quality employee out from under your wing and securing their position going forward. We will run quotes for them, discussing the pros and cons of all options for their health insurance for themselves and possibly their family and we can roll the 401k into an IRA (Individual Retirement Account).

One of the key components to advising folks on their retirement assets is to have a discussion with both the husband and the wife as to their overall picture. We talk about their asset to debt ratio and where their funds would grow safely.

Generally speaking, a retired person’s allocations for the investment of their funds should be safer leaning more towards the conservative side than the high risk side. The investment that we suggest here would offer guaranteed principal, a minimum rate of return, tax deferral and access to their funds. Outside of that, we recommend that plenty of reserve is left in your local bank for unexpected needs and luxuries that you so well deserve and a portion “in the market”.

When I say “in the market”, I mean stocks, bonds, mutual funds, i.e. high risk, non-guaranteed investments, so we can still appreciate market gain safely if we are more tethered to guaranteed and conservative funds. We do not want to lose principal at this stage of our lives as we do not have the mortality left to absorb significant losses.

So, our role here does not start and stop with your group benefits. We offer to continue to serve the needs of your employees as they venture into their retirement. Again, please know our consultations are free and we’re here to help.

Whether you are a small business owner or whether you a re a corporation, you should have an account manager or an employee in house that takes care of your group health benefits for your employees.

We are seeing more compliance and regulatory demands than I can ever remember. We are constantly being updated and educated to stay current so that we can keep all of the accounts we’re responsible for compliant. If I were your employee, not a licensed insurance broker, I would spend the majority of my day working on compliance and regulatory issues in an effort to keep you compliant.

Another option you may consider would be having Sears Insurance as your benefits account manager. I would work hand-in-hand with your employee to accomplish the same goal, but that person’s time wouldn’t be dominated and in the end, it would be a cost-savings for you as well as assuring that you are compliant.

The role of an account manager has become increasingly important since the passage of the ACA. It is the account manager that keeps the processes moving forward through the service provided to Clients (you would be considered a Client of an insurance company).

Account managers have taken on many more duties and are critical in the compliance effort. These professional services provide successful compliance and piece of mind that things will be taken care of very skillfully. We have an understanding of the complex and critical role this plays in the health and benefits arena. We understand the key technical components of benefit plans and are prepared to counsel you on various products as well as assist with your compliance.

Please call me, my consultations are free and let’s see if balancing the responsibilities for your HR people makes sense for your organization.

No, I’m not talking about a diagnosis. I’m talking about your high deductible health care plan.

Sometimes these are also called HAS (health savings accounts). I have touted these for years as being a way to participate with the highest quality carriers, the highest quality network of providers and offset your monthly premium with a high deductible.

HAS plans also have some tax advantages. So, the mentality was, you get your free preventative/wellness exam once per year and outside of that, you pay for your doctoring out of pocket until you have reached your deductible/maximum out of pocket. Years go by and you “win” on this theory by having a lower premium than insuring with a low deductible and if you choose to participate in an HAS account, some tax advantages.

However, with the environment the way it is presently, there are some hospitals that are asking the patients to pay for their high deductibles up front. The purpose for this is that the hospitals are trying to reduce the probability for accounts receivable as they continue to struggle with low reimbursements for their services. Nationwide, we have seen more health insurance companies participate in mergers and acquisitions than ever before. This was done because their reserves were not adequate enough to support the tidal waves of extremely high dollar Clients. Understandably so, but the result of that reduced the number of companies in the marketplace making competition less than it was before…driving rates up.

If you have an HDHP, my suggestion is, you’re going to pay now or pay later, so if you are astute about your budgeting and your financial planning, you indeed would have an HAS account set up, you would contribute to it and if you were ever asked by a hospital system to pay for your deductible in advance, you would be prepared and this would not be a challenge for you and you would still enjoy the benefits of an HDHP.

Please call me for a review of your current position, we will analyze your options, provide you with choices and you will know best what is a good choice for your family.

In case you haven’t heard, individual health insurance policies are scheduled for a substantial premium increase starting in January 2017.

The reason that these increases have been approved by the State Insurance Commissioner is because the big losses that have been suffered by insurance carriers need to be absorbed.

A year or so ago, our State’s leading health insurance carrier, Wellmark, was publicly criticized for the amount of dollars they had in reserves. Well, as it turns out, thank goodness for all of us (particularly if you were a patient receiving services) because Wellmark was able to sustain and pay all of our providers. Providers are hospitals, urgent care facilities, doctor’s offices, laboratories and every specialty of the medical field you can imagine, ambulance, air ambulance, prescription drugs and the list is endless.

However, if you remember several years back, prior to the Affordable Care Act (ACA), becoming a law in 2010, Americans were promised that they would not have to change doctors and that the average family would have a premium savings of approximately $2,500 per year.

What this means for consumers is that insurance carries are asking for sharp price increases after suffering big losses on exchanges in the last two years. One of the underlying problems that presented a huge liability was an expiration of the re-insurance program under the Affordable Care Act that was intended to offset some of the losses due to sicker customers who racked up high medical bills.

Open enrollment is at the end of the year for January effective dates. My suggestion to you would be to call me any time this summer so that we can develop a strategy. I will look at your current plan and the choices you had at that time and see if this plan is working as well for you as you wanted to, what your other choices look like at the time and try to figure out all of the details that are important to you. So, in fourth quarter when I have access to 2017 rates, we’ve got a general idea of what you’d like to do.

If any of you happen to be business owners, we might want to contemplate the pros and cons of looking at group insurance and stepping out of the individual insurance arena. We do have options, there’s always more than one way to look at anything, so please call me, I’m here to help.