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Medibid offers creative, cost-effective plan options to employers

Medibid is the solution to rising prices in healthcare, providing alternative plans that contain costs and improve profits, giving employees more control. Medibid can work with employers of any size, leveraging market solutions to turn your employees into true healthcare consumers. Those solutions include plans that use reference-based pricing (RBP), direct contracting or other options to optimize value per healthcare dollar spent.

Our solution: Reference-based pricing

Medibid frequently utilizes reference-based pricing in its self-insured or self-funded plan offerings. RBP plans save employers money because they empower employees to make better provider decisions. Employees are incentivized to make the cost-efficient decision, and that reduces healthcare expenses for everyone, including the employer.

RBP allows employers to control what they will pay for various medical care services. An RBP plan isn’t limited by network restrictions and does not require a traditional insurance company to act as the payer. Instead, the employer dictates what it will pay for various services, typically using Medicare’s rates as a critical reference point. In this instance, an RBP plan takes Medicare’s rates and recalculates them with a multiplier or percentage. This incentivizes providers beyond what Medicare’s noncompetitive rates offer and provides cost certainty and containment to the employer.

RBP plans work best when everyone knows how they function and when price transparency is available to plan members. Medibid ensures this transparency is available, and this makes RBP plans an ideal companion to Medibid’s bidding platform. Both employer and employee know what their expected contributions are before services are rendered, not after, when it’s far more difficult to control costs.

Medibid will also help employers communicate the plan’s details and coverage to employees. In this way, Medibid is not just a bidding platform, but a willing partner in educating and informing an employer’s plan members.

What are other solutions Medibid offers employers with self-funded plans?

Medibid builds self-funded plans for employers, and these plans remove the traditional insurance carrier from the process. Instead, employers pay for out of pocket claims from a fund set aside for the purpose. Self-insured plans offer several benefits to employers, including:

• Better plan customization – Employers have more control in defining a self-insured plan, so they can build a plan to fit their employees’ needs. This is in contrast to purchasing a plan through a carrier, which typically adds on services employees don’t require.
• Better compliance – Self-insured plans are federally regulated through The Employee Retirement Income Security Act, or ERISA. Because these plans are federally regulated, employers don’t have to contend with conflicting regulations and mandates at the state level. Medibid ensures employer plans are compliant and meet the threshold for minimum essential coverage or better.
• Better cash flow – Employers are not required to pre-pay with a self-insured plan, and the employer also has control over the plan’s reserves. Those reserves can be used to generate interest for the employer, instead of for the insurance carrier.
• Better freedom in selecting a provider – Self-insured plans do not come with a restrictive network, and employers are able to contract with any provider or provider network for their employees’ benefit.

Direct contracting is an emerging option for employers that want certain providers for their employees. With direct contracting, employers can negotiate plan details with hospitals, specialists, outpatient clinics and surgical centers. These negotiations often result in reduced treatment costs for the employer’s team and can also keep employees local if they do not wish to travel for treatment.

The only challenge with direct contracting is the time the employer must put into negotiating favorable terms. Medibid solves this challenge with a bidding platform that connects patients to providers who prefer a direct contracting relationship. Providers on Medibid offer set pricing to patients, so there’s no need to negotiate, and the employer and patient pay only what the bid specifies. There are no surprises before or after treatment, so costs can be forecast with much greater accuracy.

Medibid can also save employers money by opening up medical tourism opportunities to employees. Medical tourism is gaining in popularity due to the savings it promises patients. According to the American Journal of Medicine, the number of U.S. citizens traveling for medical treatment doubled between 2007 and 2017.

Medical tourism can reduce treatment costs from anywhere between 25 and 90 percent, depending on where treatment is administered. Given this cost reduction, employers can save money even if they cover the employee’s travel costs.

Medibid facilitates medical tourism because it is open to providers from around the world. Medibid is a global marketplace, so international providers are able to compete on price, and patients are able to find them. Through Medibid, your employees can find high-quality, low cost healthcare while on vacation.

Many employers have issues developing a plan that works for their employees and with the company’s budget. Medibid can help employers overcome these issues, offering several alternatives that will save the company money, provide quality care and give everyone involved more control over their healthcare.