DSP Insurance Insights

For most education leaders, employer-sponsored healthcare has long been treated as a fixed part of doing business. 

You select a carrier. 
You negotiate a renewal. 
You absorb the increase. 
You explain it to employees. 
You repeat the process the following year. 

Running a school is hard work. Every dollar matters. Every staff member matters even more.

In early childhood education, whether practiced like Montessori, Waldorf or others, benefits are not just a nice-to-have. They are the difference between keeping great teachers and losing them to other jobs. The right benefits strategy helps you manage costs, keep your people, and give families the consistency they expect.

If you run payroll anywhere from The Loop to Lake County, you’re paying too much for the same care your people could get safely, often better, outside the hospital campus. Not because you’re careless. Because our market is wired to push routine services into the most expensive settings and then send the bill to employers.

Here’s the blunt version: consolidation plus misaligned incentives = inflated unit prices and the wrong site of care. And it’s costing your plan millions that should be going to wages, growth, and retirement matches...not “facility fees” and parking garages.

When it comes to employee benefits, one thing hasn’t changed: people still don’t understand them.

On September 9th, 2024 the Departments of Labor, Treasury, and Health and Human Services released the final rule changes regarding the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act. 

Under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) a new fee was introduced. The Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) fees for self-insured plans are a mandatory charge due by July 31st of the year following the last day of the policy year. It’s reported on IRS Form 720.

Running a business, whether it’s a small startup or a mid-sized company, comes with its own set of challenges. From managing day-to-day operations to keeping up with ever-changing regulations, business owners and HR professionals often find themselves overwhelmed with administrative tasks that take time and attention away from core business activities. Partnering with a Professional Employer Organization (PEO) is a powerful strategy for maximizing business growth. But what exactly is a PEO, and how can it specifically enhance your business growth?  Let’s explore how this partnership can be a game-changer.

The Departments of Labor (DOL), Health and Human Services (HHS), and Treasury aim to codify compliance and ensure equitable access to mental health and substance use disorder (MH/SUD) benefits, reinforcing the importance of mental health parity compliance.

Understanding MHPAEA Compliance for Health Plans

The Evolution of Mental Health Parity Laws

The journey towards mental health parity in the United States has been marked by significant legislative milestones. It began with the Mental Health Parity Act (MHPA) of 1996, which laid the groundwork by requiring health plans to ensure that annual and lifetime limits for mental health benefits were on par with those for medical and surgical benefits. However, this act did not mandate coverage for mental health services nor did it address other financial or treatment limits, leaving gaps that subsequent legislation sought to fill.