Super Supplemental: Expense Reimbursed Insured

At Armada, one of our favorite topics is group supplemental insurance. We love to help our brokers and clients better understand the different types of supplemental insurance. While we’ve definitely discussed expense reimbursed insured plans before (take a look at these posts: here and here), we have never dedicated an entire post to this powerful type of supplemental benefit.

Let’s take a deeper dive into expense reimbursed insurance plans.

What

Expense reimbursed insured group supplemental plans are layered on top of the primary health insurance plan to offer additional coverage. These plans offer reimbursement for eligible healthcare expenses, which vary based on the plan and product.

The Difference

So how do these plans differ from your typical supplemental plans?

Well, unlike hospital indemnity or other voluntary plans, expense reimbursed insured plans aren’t subject to disease or event limitations. That means your coverage is available to you when you need it.

Expense reimbursed insured plans can cover deductibles and coinsurance expenses as well as other, more unexpected expenses like an x-ray or a hospital stay. Some expense reimbursed insurance plans even offer coverage for 213(d) flex-type expenses which the primary plan wouldn’t typically cover, like LASIK and brand-name prescriptions, kind of like a super-charged HRA.

While other types of supplemental plans say they fill gaps in coverage, sometimes their restrictions and limitations can prevent them from filling gaps. Expense reimbursed insured supplemental plans have the ability to truly fill gaps. With these plans, you have valuable insurance coverage that has the flexibility to protect you on your best and worst day.

Excepted Benefit

While we don’t have time to go into all the details about excepted benefits, here is an overview. (For more info, reach out at newbreed@armadacare.com.)

Excepted benefits are benefits that are excepted from ACA and other healthcare reforms. That includes nondiscrimination rules. Excepted benefits are broken down into 4 categories, and expense reimbursed insured plans fit into the ‘Similar Supplemental’ category. Because of this, expense reimbursed insured plans reap two huge pros.

One, regardless of an ACA repeal or not, these plans will remain legitimate and viable. In such a volatile time in the health insurance industry, it’s good to know that you have a few constants!

And two, because expense reimbursed insured plans are excepted from nondiscrimination rules, you can offer these plans to select employee classes. This kind of tool is instrumental in managing today’s healthcare costs while balancing recruitment and retention challenges. You can offer these plans to just those hard-to-recruit-and-retain individuals to bolster talent management. And because these plans have so many different pricing and coverage options, you can plug in different levels of coverage for different employee groups based on their needs and the client needs. It gives the employer way more control and flexibility than one-size-fits-all plans.

Super Supplemental

Expense reimbursed insured goes far beyond what your typical supplemental plan can do. Ready to see the difference for yourself? View this recorded webinar.