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Behind "The Climb": Now, We're Impacting Lives
We helped businesses and employees save over $4,000,000 on their healthcare benefits in one year. Now, we're going to go even bigger in 2023.
Can we really do this? Can we do more than just offer benefits? Can we dramatically impact lives?
During the summer of 2021, those were some of the internal questions that we were asking ourselves. We wanted to measure the results of our healthcare benefit solutions - we knew we were making a difference, but how much of an impact were we really having?
So, we started an internal project that we called “The Climb.” The symbolism of the K2 mountain was behind the fact that the view is always better at the top. We set out to save $1,000,000 for companies as well as to put $1,000,000 back into employees’ pockets.
Fast forward a year and we've discovered the answers to our questions. YES, we can positively impact lives. In one year, our new clients have saved a total of $3,056,719 and their employees have saved $1,196,378.
In just one year, our new clients have saved a total of $3,056,719 and their employees have saved $1,196,378.
We all had seen the negative statistics regarding employer-sponsored health insurance:
medical insurance costs have risen by 740% since 1984
46% of insured Americans are struggling with out-of-pocket insurance costs
49% of employees will leave their job within the next 12 months due to weak benefits
80% of medical bills contain an error...
And the list goes on and on. Our objective was to flip the narrative and to produce positive numbers. We wanted to show that there is indeed a light at the end of the tunnel.
STARTING THE CLIMB
We decided to launch The Climb on Labor Day 2021 since we were focused on directly impacting people that work and rely on employer-sponsored health insurance. Most employees are not aware of all that goes on behind the scenes regarding their healthcare benefits plan, and so it was important for us to not only help the companies that we work with, but to focus on their employees as well.
To be successful, we needed to reduce the amount of how much was coming out of employee paychecks AND how much the employer was paying to cover their medical benefits.
A key way to do that is to reduce the actual costs of medical claims (without reducing the quality and access to care). By doing that, we would be able to show that groups were not a high risk for insurance companies, and therefore, should be rated much more favorably. In other words, the group's premiums would decrease, allowing less money to be deducted per pay period.
As an organization, this is the formula that we have used successfully for over 12 years. The focus of The Climb was to document the monetary impact on our new clients during a 12-month period.
From the beginning, it became obvious that our new clients were simply unaware of opportunities that existed to improve their coverage and reduce costs, even within their current plan. For instance, 33% of Americans have admitted they have skipped filling a prescription because of cost. As I write this article today, there are dozens of programs in place that would allow those same folks to get their medications for free if businesses knew how to use them. Although it was sad to learn that so many people have been unnecessarily struggling with prescription drug costs, it was exciting to realize that we could really help a lot of people.
And that is exactly what we have done, day after day, month after month, for the last year. We evaluated a group’s current plan, we educated them on what was available to them today, and then we developed a long-term strategy that benefitted the organization and their employees.
Saving $3,056,719 for employers and $1,196,378 saved for employees.
REAL PEOPLE, REAL RESULTS
One of our recent success stories involves a woman that has been battling breast cancer. We worked with a team of like-minded vendors and were able to contract a local facility that is now going to provide her cancer treatment infusions at no cost ($0 out of pocket for the employee and $80,000 savings for the organization).
Additionally, she is now going to receive her medication at no cost ($0 out of pocket for the employee and another $60,000 in savings for the organization). At the end of the day, the company wins, and most importantly, the employee wins with less financial stress and she can focus on trying to get well.
At the end of our first year of “The Climb”, we are extremely grateful for the opportunity to positively impact lives. Ultimately, our results were even better than expected. If we had never met our new clients, those companies would have spent an additional $3,056,719 and their employees would have come out of their own pockets $1,196,378 in just the last year alone.
Moving forward, we are looking to expand on those numbers. We want to partner with people that are passionate about influencing two of the most important things in a person's life: their health and their money.
Our goal is to not just offer benefits, but to positively impact lives. There are so many wonderful solutions that already exist - our mission is to help spread the message. It should not matter what organization you work for or the size of your company. We all deserve access to quality healthcare at an affordable price.
The healthcare renaissance is in full effect, and we can’t wait to see what the next year has to offer.