• Health Insurance Pools

    HIPAA Contacts:

    Steve Sallee, Executive Director, 507-281-6673, ssallee@ssc.coop
    Bill Colopoulos, Health Benefits Consultant, 507-281-6690, bcolopoulos@ssc.coop
    Dale Walston, Director of Operations, 507-281-6675, dwalston@ssc.coop
     
     
     
    Health Benefits Pooling with the Southeast Service Cooperative
    The Southeast Service Cooperative pool is a non-profit, member-owned pool that is locally managed by its members. SSC employs Medica to administer its program. SSC is one of seven Minnesota-based cooperatives that have been providing pooled insurance programs since 1983. Statewide there are hundreds of organizations with thousands of members participating in the Minnesota Healthcare Consortium. SSC, together with other participating service cooperatives from across the state, negotiates statewide stop-loss pricing, administrative discounts, and lower healthcare costs.

    The Advantages of the SSC Health Insurance Pool   

    • The SSC pool provides the advantages of both self-insurance and being fully insured. The pool provides you with the low administrative cost savings of a self-insured plan while providing you with the protection of a fully insured program.
    • Wellness programs! The SSC pool continues to provide funding and coordination of wellness programs In the past years, the health pools have contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to group level wellness initiatives.
    • ACA compliance services. SSC provides all participating pool groups with full ACA compliance services; including service cost and utilization reporting information that all groups need.
    • Economies of Scale. As one of the seven regional Service Cooperatives, we leverage our collective purchasing power statewide to form a single competitive purchasing pool for health benefits administration, high claim protection, and a lower maximum overall risk exposure than other pools. Our administrative and stop loss fees are low; bringing the buying power of Fortune 100 companies to all of our groups; regardless of their size. This means that our more of our groups’ premium dollars goes towards paying actual health care costs; payments to the insurance company are minimal.
    • Regional Claim Pooling. At the regional level, each Service Cooperative reduces the volatility of claim cost fluctuations by managing pools of similar risk groups. Our groups experience far less volatility in their annual renewals than they would if insured on an individual basis. 
    • Min-Max Renewal Formula. Our pools use a proven “minimum-maximum” renewal formula to reduce renewal increase volatility. The members’ Renewal Formula Committee establishes a minimum rate floor and a maximum rate increase cap. Each participating group is then assigned their own rate renewal limited by either the minimum floor or the maximum cap. 
    • Pooling shares common risks over time. Pool groups find there are years where they give help to other pool members and years when they receive help from other pool members. Over time, long-time pool participants find that these periods even out and result in less volatility in their renewal experience than the groups would otherwise experience if they were insured on their own. 

    Click here to access the Minnesota Healthcare Consortium's webpage.

    Minnesota Healthcare Consortium

     

    Health Insurance Photo