One of the largest issues facing the nation right now is the rising costs of health insurance. Many people can not afford to buy health insurance, because the premiums have been driven up to unimaginable heights over the last decade or so. Many companies are trying to help shoulder the burden of the large premiums by paying a certain percentage of the total cost every month for the employee. Many of these companies have tried to work around this problem in many ways.
Larger companies have tried to dodge the growing health insurance premiums by changing the requirements for employees to receive benefits. Many companies are making it harder for people to receive these benefits. Some companies are requiring the employee to work more hours per week than they used to have to work to receive benefits. Other companies are requiring that an employee work for the company for a longer period of time, before they are eligible for benefits.
Both of these approaches will save the company on health insurance costs, because they will not have to cover as many employees. However this is not the best approach for employees, because it makes it that much harder for them to obtain health insurance. Many other companies are trying to lower health insurance costs a different way.
I used to work for a company that had very inexpensive health insurance, and then supplemented it with a health savings account. The health insurance had very low premiums, but the deductible, and payouts for the health insurance were not very good. However the company would set their own deductibles, and co-pays, and then they would take money out of their health savings account to reimburse the employee the difference. This was a very good system, because they were not paying as much money out each month on premiums. They would only have to spend money from the health savings account when the employee actually needed it. Their goal was to eventually cut out the health insurance plan completely when the health savings account had grown large enough. At this time, the company would then save a considerable amount of money in premiums every month.