Illinois Group Health Insurance - Getting Hard Numbers

If you are a business owner with an Illinois group health insurance plan then you have probably gone out to get a competitive quote more than once. How did you do it? Did you send the agent a census? If you did you received back soft numbers from the agent. That is the premium rate for your group before the groups medical conditions have been taken into consideration. For groups of 2- 50 this rate-up factor, which is also called the medical rate-up factor or medical sir charge, can be anything between 0 to 67% in Illinois. In certain market places this is a very well excepted practice and works well, but in other places it's not the best way to go. Just because a health insurance company comes in with the best soft numbers that doesn’t necessarily mean they will have the best hard numbers. This is due to the fact that every carrier underwrites groups a little differently.

Why not let the carriers truly compete for your business. Let them work for it and make them sharpen their pencils. This way will also guarantee you are getting the best possible deal. To get a competitive Illinois group health insurance quote you should have your employees fill out one set of applications with a carrier that will not look at any other carrier’s applications. In Illinois a good choice would be Blue Cross/Blue Shield. Most other carriers will look at other carrier’s applications because they want a chance to earn your business. Once an agent gets the application they can send them out to all the different carriers to get underwritten rates back from each carrier.

If you want to compare apples to apples this is the best approach. The rates you get back from every carrier except BCBS will be what I call tentative firm numbers. In other words those numbers are not binding because they are on BCBS applications. To be binding they have to be on the carrier’s applications that you decide to go forward with. So as long as the health conditions haven’t changed since you filled out BCBS applications, the quotes that you received will be good. Two things can happen. Either BCBS came back with the best numbers or another carrier did. So worst case scenario, if another carrier came back with better numbers and that’s the carrier you want to go forward with have your agent come in with the current BCBS applications and have your employees transfer the information over from one application to the other. Luckily there is an agency in Illinois that can help you keep a quality plan in place at an affordable rate.

Randy Gillespie is the owner of Focus Insurance Group, specializing in Illinois Group Health Insurance. To learn more visit his site at Focus InsGroup.