How Your Boss's Health Insurance Choices Can Determine Your Financial Health

By Sammy Mack,

Sammy Mack

Published May 17, 2018 at 5:42 AM EDT

There's a lot of choice in the dental appliance world, but what about in health insurance?

More Floridians get their health insurance through their jobs than from any other source—about 42 percent of us, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Which, when you start talking about making choices in healthcare, has some interesting implications for your personal health and your financial health.

Before you ever set foot in a doctor’s office, hospital or lab, somebody at your job—the HR person, a manager, the person who drew the short straw—has made big choices on your behalf. The second they pick out the insurance plans for the year, they’ve decided the network—choosing the list of doctors and facilities available to you.

And with that decision, your employer also chooses how much financial risk you’ll be exposed to if you do get sick. Co-pays, deductibles, monthly premiums, maximum out-of-pocket limits—all of that is decided at work.

But with yearly increases in the cost of providing health insurance, employers also have to think about the business bottom line.

It’s a tricky position, and to hear more about it, Health News Florida spoke with Rene Silva, general manager of Orthodenco Labs. Silva is responsible for picking out insurance for his employees.

LISTEN: One employer describes the tensions when picking out health insurance