Engineering Inc. - January/February 2009 - (Page 16) By alan Joch S 16 ENGINEERING INC. Firms find creative ways to stem rising teady increases in health care costs concern all employers, but small- and mediumsized engineering firms are truly feeling the pain. Offering a comprehensive and affordable health plan is table stakes for firms scrambling to attract the best and brightest from a shrinking talent pool. “You can’t recruit employees without it. In our industry, it’s an expectation,” says Karen Wood, chief financial officer at HMB Professional Engineers, Inc., a 70-person firm in Frankfort, Ky. plans. A growing number of companies are adding newer high-deductible plans complemented by health savings accounts (HSAs). Still others believe self-insurance models offer the most leverage when negotiating premium costs with insurance providers. Regardless of which option engineering firms choose, all are spending a significant amount of time trying to boost their employees’ health care IQ. “Employees need to know that health care costs are not somebody else’s problem,” Wood says. “The decisions they make with their own health have more of an impact on their insurance costs than anything else.” RX TO EASE EMPLOYER HEALTH CARE P pHoTos.com/JUpITer ImaGes Add to that the budgetary tradeoffs ballooning health care costs impose on the broader economy. “There’s high priority in our industry to lobby for infrastructure funding from the government, but if we can’t get this health care cost issue under control, infrastructure funding will just be pushed completely into the background,” says Michael McMeekin, president of Lamp, Rynearson & Associates in Omaha, Neb. Some firms opt to give their employees a choice of traditional insurance carriers, such as health maintenance organizations (HMO) and preferred provider organizations (PPO), each with preferred networks of providers, or regional health insurance JaNuaRy / FEbRuaRy 2009
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