Vision Care and California
Group Health Insurance
Ancillary benefits to your
employees may be the most
underrated and under emphasized
part of your employee benefits
package. Vision care is not
very expensive, is readily
available, and provides the
employees you count on to run
your business a valuable and
tangible benefit they can use to
save real dollars. The cost of
vision care is so low in fact
you may be better off offering
strong vision and dental in some
situations instead of overpaying
for excessive medical coverage.
Employees value their vision
plan as a tangible example of
employment which values their
contribution.
Who Offers Vision
Plans? For
years and years vision was
provided as a specialty product
through specialty insurance
carriers. VSP, or
Vision Service Plan is and has
been the overall market space
leader for vision care. More
recently, the health insurance
carriers have packaged vision
care plans either through
provider networks built from
scratch or through bundling
deals where the health insurance
carrier would package a 3rd
party vision plan with the
health and dental insurance.
Why Offer a Vision Plan to
Your Employees? With
all the computers and reading
going on these days it seems
just about everyone has glasses
or contacts. Statistically
speaking you’ve probably got
about one half of your employee
base using your health plan just
for annual physicals,
preventative care, colds and
flus, or not at all. These
people in other words are not
using the health plan very much
and may not value it for what
it’s costing you in Employer
premium contributions. But,
they will be very happy you
bought a vision care plan to
help them with eye exam costs,
frames, eye glass lenses, and
contacts. It is similar to
dental care in this sense: not
all people go to the doctor, but
a whole bunch go to the dentist
and wear glasses or contacts.
Read more here about
offering California Group Dental
Insurance.
Is Qualifying for Vision
Coverage the Same?
Underwriting for vision coverage
works on the same general
model of qualification as small
business health insurance.
You will need typically 75% of
w2 payroll employees, 51% of
your employees residing in
California, and 50% minimum
Employer premium contribution
levels.
What do you Usually Get
Covered in the Plan? You
are making a decision on how
high or low of a co-pay you want
to see for the doctor’s office
visit. Then there is the co-pay
amount for the annual eye exam.
You can get low cost plans which
keep these co-pays in the $10,
$20, and $25 range. Beyond
getting in the door you should
see a designated dollar amount
paid towards frames, lenses, and
contacts. These benefits are
often in the $80 to $120 range.
Some of the plans then will give
the benefits each year, and
others to reduce premium cost
will offer the benefits once
every two years. This logic
reasons you may not need to
obtain new glass every year. In
some of the plans the amount
paid has to be chosen for either
glasses OR contacts, but not
both in the same benefit period.
Other
important
resources:
California
Small Group
health quote
California
Small Group
online
doctor
listing
California
Group
Enrollment
and
Eligibility
Center
