Dental Reward Fads to get Firms : Oral Benefits- Recent, Offer plus Long run
In today’s competitive marketplace, most businesses wish they might provide current and potential employees with comprehensive dental care benefits. “Dental plans rank as the 3rd most significant employee benefit, just behind health and retirement.”18 According to Cathy Smithwick, dental practice leader at Mercer Consulting, dental coverage may be the “visible benefit because normally 75% of employees will use a good dental plan.”19
Dental benefits not only increase employee satisfaction and morale, but they could also reduce the hours lost due to dental issues. According to Oral Health in America, “employed adults lost more than 164 million hours of work each year due to dental disease or dental visits.”10
A recent study from NADP shows that only 56% of the U.S. population has dental insurance.11 Therefore, inexpensive dental care solutions are highly coveted by both employers and employees. 牙套價錢 “To satisfy employee demand, more employers added dental to the huge benefits menu in recent years. Among the final holdouts, the us government, will offer dental benefits to employees in 2006.”20
“Seven out of ten employers (71%) offer dental benefits, often using them as the differentiating element in recruiting and retaining employees.”18 The study shows that the bigger a business is, the much more likely they’re to offer dental benefits. “Among firms with at the least 10 employees, 56% offered dental coverage in 2003. Just one year later, that figure leaped to 67%, based on an annual survey of employer-sponsored health plans by Mercer Human Resource Consulting. Dental offerings among large employers (500 employers and up) jumped from 90% to 96% of firms.”20
Unfortunately, many businesses cannot afford to cover all or section of their workers’dental benefits. “Mercer data show dental costs averaged $577 for many employers in employers in 2003 and edged up to $598 in 2004, a 3.6% increase. Large employers, meanwhile, saw a 5.4% increase from $574 to $605.”20 According to Evelyn Ireland, Executive Director of NADP, “employers aren’t dropping dental coverage, but they’re squeezing the amount of money they’re adding to it.”20 In order the price of providing dental benefits to their employees continues to go up, businesses are passing these price hikes on to employees. “Probably the most obvious method for employers to regulate dental costs … is to make employees pay more.”20
Kirk Rothrock, CEO of CompBenefits, believes that many businesses are shifting the price of dental benefits to their employees.20 “The greatest trend we’ve seen during the last three or four years may be the move from employer-paid benefits to voluntary benefits,” he says. “Employers say, ‘I cannot afford to cover your dental benefits.’ ”20 The State of the Dental Benefits Market, 2005 confirms that “over 70% of the population is paying at the least a portion of these dental premiums” and about 25% are investing in their entire dental premium.16
Many businesses are looking at discount dental plans, an inexpensive option to dental insurance, to defray the expenses of providing their workers with valuable dental benefits. Discount dental plans present flexible, affordable dental benefits which are easy to implement and practically effortless to manage. They supply businesses with a perfect way complement their existing benefits and offer a more balanced benefits package. Many businesses are employing discount dental plans to offer dental benefits to the people which are rarely included in traditional dental insurance, including retirees, part-timers, seasonal workers and uninsured dependants.
Discount dental plans are much more affordable compared to the $600 many companies are paying to cover employees with traditional dental insurance. Furthermore, discount dental plans save businesses valuable company time with convenient dental benefit solutions without any tedious paperwork hassles. By providing employees the freedom to decide on their very own plan, businesses are relieved from the burden of picking dental benefits to match the unique, individual needs of these diverse workforce. Discount dental plans allow businesses to award their workers with the reassurance they deserve and the affordable dental care they desire.
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