Communication lessons from the employee benefits sector

(May 24, 2005) A new drug company survey reveals a number of interesting attitudes and opinions Canadians have about their public and private healthcare plans. The report will likely be most interesting to plan administrators who are trying to strike a fine balance of costs and coverage, but advisors could also benefit from some of the study’s communication recommendations when dealing with staff and clients alike.

Employees are aging and chronic diseases are on the rise, putting pressure on heath benefit plans, in turn forcing plan providers to consider costs and trade-offs. Fortunately, employees seem more willing than ever to accept a certain amount of responsibility for their health and healthcare.

The sanofi-aventis healthcare survey, based on research conducted by Ipsos-Reid, found respondents are willing to make choices to manage health risks and costs in order to maintain core coverage. But they recognize that resources of the public healthcare system and health benefit plans are not limitless and they want the system and their benefit plan to be flexible, tailored and responsive to their needs and health decisions. The majority said active, non-smoking employees and those who are responsible about taking their medication for chronic conditions, for example, should pay less for health benefit coverage.

While many said employers have an obligation to cover de-listed provincial health services, they also said the government should institute public policy initiatives that promote good health, like tax credits or deductions for personal gym memberships and recreational fees in order to encourage healthy choices.

The exercise in good communication comes with making people accept and appreciate the inherent costs associated with running a health plan business. The survey found that many will accept trade-offs within their employee health benefit plan but they won’t trade them in. In fact, 60% of those polled would choose their plan over receiving annual cash payments up to $11,000.

According to healthcare survey advisor board of consulting, health, human resources, insurance and benefits experts, most health plan members don’t actually know the cost of their benefits. At the same time, they say the government doesn’t appreciate the role employers play in supporting the healthcare system. Although the authors were “pleasantly surprised” that the value prevention and new health services went up in the esteem of respondents and they fully expect more Canadians in coming years will appreciate the need to avoid illness, they point out that at some point drug plans will become unaffordable, especially for small businesses.

To cope, the report recommends benefit plan providers continue to build on the notion that plans costs are a shared responsibility and nurture the sense of personal responsibility for benefits plans by collecting data on plan use and providing consistent and targeted communication to make plan members aware of their employee health plan costs.

As part of that initiative, the authors also recommend employers improve plan understanding by reviewing and simplifying plan language, both in the contract and plan booklet, to ensure employees know what is covered and what is not.

The same advice — communicating the issues rather than ignoring them or assuming the client knows the reality of the situation — could be used effectively by any advisor who’s ever tried to engage in the fee-for-service debate, messy explanations of practice and fund costs or tried to talk a worried client with an active trading itch to stay the long-term course.

The evidence would suggest there’s some truth and merit to that idea. Plan members surveyed by Ipsos-Reid who believed and understood that costs had increased significantly for their employers, said they were somewhat more likely to feel an obligation to control costs. Those who did not believe costs had gone up were not as likely to consider the cost of a product or service before they expensed it. Similarly, those who felt they were well taken care of were also more likely to work on curbing costs.

Filed by Kate McCaffery Advisor.ca, kate.mccaffery@advisor.rogers.com