Educating on the Value of Healthcare Tax Advantaged Accounts

Oct 15, 2019 | Brokers, Employers, Health Plan, Human Resources

As an employer, broker, health plan administrator or carrier, you probably understand that the majority of tax advantage accounts (i.e. HSA, Flex etc.) don’t receive nearly the attention they deserve. Employees neither understand nor appreciate them, meaning they don’t always provide a lot of value. A recent study by ebri found that most individuals are using their accounts incorrectly. For example:

  • Only 13% of HSA accounts reach their annual maximum contribution level
  • 77% of HSA accounts with contributions also had distributions
  • Only 4% of account holders invested the money in their HSA account

By looking at these statistics, you can infer a few things:

  1. Individuals aren’t using their health account as a long-term savings account, and they don’t view it as such
  2. People don’t see the value in putting money into their accounts

These factors are essential to uncovering healthcare affordability for the employee. Employees overwhelmingly report that they don’t understand their entire benefits package, and don’t necessarily value it, despite the heavy cost born by the employer. With this in mind, it’s our responsibility as employers, brokers and as health plan administrators to ensure that employees understand (for the first time) why their health savings arrangement is important to them.

In order to get value out of the account, employers can do the following:

  1. Year-round communications – with the employee about the tax advantage account, not just during enrollment
  2. Utilize unconventional communication methods – look to social media, video and text rather than just emails. People in 2019 respond extremely positively to videos as a form of content consumption.
  3. Provide one place for them to go – look for a portal that combines their benefit information, fragmented platforms for health insurance, ancillary and health accounts can be tough to navigate.
  4. Don’t rely on PDFs – most health account administrators are stuck in the stone age with printable PDFs. While these are helpful to meet legal requirements, they aren’t as impactful as using a multimedia approach.

If you want to drive savings across the whole benefits spectrum, MEDSURETY offers broad communication solutions beyond what you’re used to. This is what makes us effective communicators. Because of this, we can help to reduce your healthcare costs, not just as they relate to the tax advantaged account.