With the point and click of a computer mouse, Humana Inc. says Chicago members will soon be able to configure their own policies and view their premiums online rather than sift through the paperwork of open-enrollment forms.
The Louisville-based insurer is rolling out a new plan, known as SmartSuite, that the company has developed to help consumers more easily understand their benefit offerings and the cost of their choices.
Humana, which is launching SmartSuite in Chicago this week, said it is already negotiating with several undisclosed employers interested in buying the new product.
“We want to give employees a choice of plans and involve them,” Mark Donahue, vice president of sales for Humana’s Chicago region, told more than 200 people from Chicago’s employer and insurance brokerage community Tuesday at the Westin Hotel. “Employees … think about how they will spend their health-care dollar.”
Analysts say Humana’s SmartSuite is just one of several similar efforts by health insurers like Aetna Inc. and others across the country to improve the consumer’s understanding of benefits as health costs soar 12 to 15 percent annually.
“Everybody is moving toward engaging the consumer by trying to short-circuit some of the service problems,” said Todd Swim, analyst with benefits consulting firm William M. Mercer Inc. in Chicago. “It’s smart of Humana to do this to get better connected to the consumer. At the same time, people ought to get better educated about what is being done … and look at their benefits more wisely.”
Humana’s new plan uses a “wizard,” to guide employees through a series of questions asking them what costs they are willing to pay and what they want covered. Enrollees will then be able to choose from four to six plans that include an HMO, a preferred-provider organization and a traditional indemnity plan.
If an employee doesn’t want to be limited to a specific network for doctors and hospitals, the wizard will tell the person not to pick the HMO, the most restrictive form of health insurance in its choice offerings.
Humana says SmartSuite is different from simply offering standard plans, which don’t allow the employee to interact in making choices. Often, Donahue said, enrollees simply “fill out the [open-enrollment] form the day before it is due and make no changes.”
Humana is targeting employers of between 300 and 6,000 workers for SmartSuite.
To make it work, however, employers have to agree to buy SmartSuite exclusively. That may be difficult, say analysts, given that large employers may be offering three or more health plans from two or three different companies.
More Top Picks Best Wall Calendars For Adhd Families
Humana will continue to offer its standard benefits plans if employers don’t choose SmartSuite.
But Humana executives are confident the rising cost of health care will lead employers to look at new ways of providing benefits to their workers.
Because SmartSuite is so new, Humana is unable to provide potential cost savings. The company, however, has used a version of SmartSuite on its own 14,000 employees and has cut its costs of developing and printing enrollment forms in half to about $40,000.
“We have reduced administrative costs because we are doing this electronically,” Donahue said.