Trustmark/Starmark Self-Funding: Groups 2-99

Starmark Healthy Incentives, a self-funded plan designed for small business with 2 or more employees, could help you sace money while maintaining traditional health benefits for your employees.

With self-funding, you finance your company’s healthcare plan, funding claim expenses up to a predetermined amount.  If the actual expenses are less – you keep the savings; if expenses are greater, there is a limit on your financial risk through stop-loss insurance protection.

How Self-Funded Plans Works

• A set amount is taken from the monthly premium and put into a special bank account and used the pay expected claims
• Covered medical claims are paid from this bank account for you
• If covered claims are MORE than the specific and/or aggregate deductible, stop-loss insurance covers the balance
• If cover claims are LESS than what you funded, you keep the surplus!

Long-Term Care: Security for You and the Ones You Love (Part 2)

Today there are 25 million caregivers in the United States, most of them relatives of the person needing care.

• 36% of these caregivers are between 51 and 64, “prime working years.”

• 47% of these are employed and distracted from job focus by concerns about the loved ones at home.

• 18% of the 51 to 64 year-old caregivers have had to quit their jobs to provide care.

By 2020, 12 million older Americans will need long-term care.  It is anticipated that most will be cared for at home; family and friends are the sole caregivers for 70 percent of the elderly.

Long-Term Care: Security for You and the Ones You Love (Part 1)

Long Term Care Insurance pays for care a person receives either at home or in a facility when he or she needs help with activities of daily living (bathing, dressing, eating, mobility, bowel movement or transfers) due to an accident such as a fall, illness such as Alzheimer’s, or just old age.

How to Qualify for Long-Term Care?

To qualify for Long-Term Care a person must lose TWO of your Activities of Daily Living (ADLs):

• Bathing
• Dressing
• Eating
• Mobility
• Bowel Movement Control
• Transferring

60% of All Small Businesses Are Unaware of Tax Credits

Does your company have fewer than 25 full-time employees with an average annual wages below $50,000?

If Yes, please see the tax credits available to your company below.

Eligible companies have fewer than 25 full-time employees with average annual wages below $50,000.  The top tax credit, worth 35% of the cost of the premiums, is available to employers with 10 or fewer employees.

The law calls for the maximum small-business tax credit to rise in 2014 to 50% of premium costs for eligible employers that subsidize their employees’ health insurance costs.

60% OF ALL SMALL BUSINESS EMPLOYERS ARE UNAWARE OF THE TAX CREDITS AVAILABLE.

ARE YOU ONE OF THOSE BUSINESS?

For more information contact a Benchmark Planning Representative.

7 Broad Street Suite 2N

Red Bank, NJ 07701

732.678.8801

Five Benefits of the New Health Care Law

Today, you can take advantage of the five major benefits of the new health care law.

Preventive Care and Services

Before: Some health plans were allowed to beneficiaries for the costs of many preventive care services.

Now: All health plans except grandfathered plans are now required to provide different types of preventive care services without any cost to the member.  Some of the services include colonoscopies, mammograms, vaccinations and prenatal care.

Adults up to Age 26 can Stay on Their Parents Health Plan

Before: Health plans could exclude young adults from their parents health insurance when the individual reached a certain age or became a full-time student.

Now: Young adults can remain on their parent’s health plan until they turn 26.

Coverage for Children with Pre-Exisiting Conditions

Before: Health plans could limit or deny health coverage to children with pre-exisiting conditions, such as diabetes.

Now: The new healthcare law requires health plans to offer coverage to children regardless of whether their health issue was discovered or treated before getting the policy.

Elimination of Annual Limits on Benefits

Before: Health plans could establish a limit on annual or lifetime benefits, which means that people with chronic health problems could end up with limited or no benefits.

Now: Health plans can no longer put limits on the amount of care someone needs.

New Medicare Benefits

Before: Beneficiaries of Medicare drug plans that reached the gap in coverage called the “Donut Hole” receive a 50% discount on brand-name medications covered by their plan.