Thursday, October 30, 2008

Health Insurance and the HRA

By Ethan Kalvin

Quite a few big companies are trying to find ways to save money on the rising cost of insurance. With the cost going up so fast, they are always searching for better ways to lower their cost to the business while still maintaining a good level of benefits for themselves and their employees.

There are many ways for companies to cut insurance costs, but one new and very popular way is by offering HRAs to their employees. HRA stands for health risk assessment, and basically the employee allows the company to check their current health and provide ways that they could become healthier in the future.

There are different ways to perform HRAs. One way is to provide an employee with a questionnaire and then to provide advice from the results. Another method is testing employees for their height, weight, BMI ad performing blood tests for cholesterol and blood sugar. Both methods result in doling out advice in how to better your health.

If you are not familiar with HRA screenings, you may wonder what the benefit of them is. The company usually gives some kind of monetary assessment. They would either add a little bit of money onto an employees paycheck or deduct money off the employee's health insurance premiums. This is assumed to motivate people to become healthier and get seen.

HRA screenings can serve a great purpose to the big companies and the employees working for them. Working together to keep health insurance costs down is a worthwhile project and who knows maybe you an learn a little bit more about getting healthier and staying healthy. Now that really benefits everyone. - 15485

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