Originally published in LaborForce Media
NEW ORLEANS — By day, thousands of trustees, administrators, union leaders, benefit professionals and service providers moved between educational sessions and a packed exhibit hall at the International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans’ 72nd Annual Employee Benefits Conference.
By evening, the conversations continued across New Orleans. The House of Blues became one of the unofficial gathering places where vendors, labor leaders and benefit professionals reconnected, formed new relationships and continued discussing the challenges facing funds and their members.
The setting may have been New Orleans, but across the conference there was remarkable consistency in the issues being discussed: How do we protect the member dollar? How do we deliver better benefits without simply adding more cost? And how do funds adapt to a healthcare, retirement and benefits environment that continues to change?
For LaborForce Media, one message stood out: affordability is no longer simply a benefits-management issue. It is a kitchen-table issue and a union-hall issue.
Navigation Is Becoming a Benefit Strategy of Its Own
One of the most noticeable developments across the conference was the number of organizations focused on helping members navigate an increasingly complex system.
Via Benefits, Included Health, Medefy, Revive and LaborFirst approached that challenge from different directions.
Via Benefits has a particularly strong connection to the labor market through its work with union members and retirees.
Its marketplace helps Medicare-eligible and pre-Medicare retirees compare individual health plans while providing guidance and advocacy throughout the enrollment process. Via Benefits says it currently serves more than 65 multiemployer funds and unions representing approximately 750,000 eligible lives.
For Nina Kramer, Marketing Director at Via Benefits, the value of IFEBP comes from those direct conversations with labor.
“IFEBP is such an important opportunity to connect with the labor community around the issues that matter to their members. We’re thrilled to be here again this year, sharing our experience in retiree healthcare and having meaningful conversations about how we can better serve retirees and their families.”
Retiree healthcare is a particularly important part of the affordability conversation because funds are balancing commitments made to workers over decades with changing Medicare markets, rising healthcare costs and the need to protect benefits for future retirees as well.
Via Benefits’ model is designed to give retirees greater plan choice and guidance while helping plan sponsors move toward more predictable healthcare costs.
Revive’s booth summarized another part of the navigation issue particularly well:
“The best benefit plan is the one employees want to use.”
A sophisticated benefit that members do not understand, cannot access or do not know exists does little to improve health or deliver value.
As the number of available solutions grows, navigation may become increasingly important not only to member satisfaction, but also to whether funds actually capture the savings and outcomes those programs were purchased to deliver.
