Open Enrollment is around the corner!

Welcome to Open Enrollment 2020!

This year, Michael, Clay, Loren, and I are especially proud to present our benefits offerings. We worked very hard to make sure we exhausted every opportunity to provide everyone with the best and most cost-effective options for insurance coverage. There are several extremely important changes that are listed in this post so please be sure to read it in its entirety.

If you are about to stop reading this post because you do not take advantage of our benefits offerings, please note that you must enter Sonus.Ease.com and waive all benefits. The federal government requires us to maintain records that you have waived your benefits with us and for what reason in order to stay in compliance.

We heard your feedback last year that you need more time to review benefits and make important enrollment decisions. This year, you will have nearly two weeks to complete your elections. We will begin Open Enrollment on Tuesday, March 10th and the final day to complete your elections will be Friday, March 20th. This will give your Open Enrollment team enough time to ensure all data is entered before our benefits effective date of Monday, April 1st and ensure we can access digital ID cards, eliminating any disruption in care.

Now let’s go through the big updates that will be put into effect during this enrollment period.

1. We are changing our Open Enrollment dates after this year to be Calendar Year enrollment to align directly with deductibles and out of pocket maximums. This way, each deductible and OOP maximum will align with your plan dates and FSA enrollments. The plans you will be enrolling in now will only be effective from April 1st, 2020 through December 31st, 2020 as opposed to the typical March 31st, 2021 date. We will be doing another Open Enrollment in early December to enroll again for new plans with effective dates of January 1st, 2021 through December 31st, 2021.

2. We have chosen to move away from Anthem Blue Cross in favor of Health Net. This move was made to stabilize our rates and allow for significantly richer plans to be offered including two affordable plans with ZERO deductible.

3. Along with the change from Anthem Blue Cross, we will now only be offering 55% contributions towards PPO plans. All other HMO and EOA plans will remain at a 60% contribution.

4. We have also added benefits from Legal Shield which include identity protection and legal assistance.

5. We will be holding two Open Enrollment meetings over the conference call on the next two Mondays at 12:30 pm for 30 minutes. These goal of these meetings is to introduce you to the plans under Health Net and the benefits of their HMO and EOA plans. As always, I will also be available to you at any time including after hours.

6. Colonial Life representatives will be available to meet with you individually to make recommendations and help you best understand your benefits offerings. If you are interested in this, please send me an email with your availability for a 30 minute appointment over the next two weeks. If you are unable to schedule an in-person meeting, our Colonial Life representative Jack Wu is happy to answer all of your questions. Jack can be reached by phone at (818) 291-5201 or via email at jack.wu@coloniallifesales.com.

Let’s also review some reminders in preparation for the beginning of our Open Enrollment on Tuesday, March 10th!

1. You all received a 2020 Guide to Open Enrollment in the email referring you to this post. We are using the same system for our enrollment this year which can be found at Sonus.Ease.com. For those of you who are new to Sonus and did not go through Open Enrollment last year, this is the same system through which you completed your onboarding.

2. Be sure to login to Ease today or Monday to ensure you have your password and can login without any issues.

3. New plans will be effective April 1st and your new premiums will be deducted beginning on the check date April 10th, 2020

Questions? Concerns? Email or call me at any time! I look forward to starting this Open Enrollment journey with you!