Group health insurance rates can be high, but new programs in Canada are helping to reduce them so that employers can afford to provide better coverage for their employees. Generally, health care in Canada is handled by a publicly funded system, providing many services for free or minimal charge. This includes many surgeries, psychotherapy, visits to doctors’ offices, and dental work. However, not everything is covered by the public system, so some supplemental coverage is necessary for comprehensive service. Medications are often only covered in full for the elderly and indigent and around a third of the health care system’s expenses are still covered out of pocket by patients.
Employee benefit services, like supplemental private health care insurance coverage, in Canada is designed to cover the lacunae in this system and the remaining 30% of expenses that the primary system does not. Private group health insurance rates can be expensive because health care itself is expensive, often being difficult for private persons and employers to afford. However, the Canadian Employee Health Benefits Plan (CEHBP) is a new program that is designed to reduce group health insurance rates so that is will be easier for small employers to provide supplemental private health insurance to their employees so that more Canadians will be fully covered.
The Canadian Health Act (CHA) is the primary law that governs provincial and territorial health insurance programs and their relations with the federal health insurance program. Recently, alterations in Canada’s health care legislation has allowed for the creation of new kinds of group health care accounts with private insurers to reduce regulatory burdens so that these less expensive employer provided group health plans can be provided. If you run a small business, it is worth checking to see whether your group health insurance rates can be lowered through the CEHBP.
