If you operate a business in the commercial building sector in Texas—whether that’s pouring concrete, running miles of copper wire, or managing a massive HVAC fleet—you know exactly what it means to protect your margins. Every single day, you track your materials, your labor, and your overhead. You negotiate fiercely to keep your balance sheet strong.
So why do you let your insurance broker hand you a 15% to 20% renewal increase every year without a fight?
For decades, commercial builders and the skilled trades have been forced into a corner by the traditional, fully insured health insurance market. You write a massive check every month, and if your workforce stays healthy and doesn’t use the doctor, the insurance company simply keeps your money as pure profit. Then, they raise your rates next year anyway.
It is a broken, rigged system. But there is an alternative that the smartest companies that build Texas are already using to fight back: Level-Funded Health Plans.
At Association Benefit Solutions (ABS), we have been protecting the skilled trades since 1978. We don’t just accept the status quo. Here is how we use alternative health plan strategies to help Texas businesses stop subsidizing the insurance carriers and start protecting their bottom line.
What Are Level-Funded Health Plans?
To understand why level-funding is so powerful, you have to look at the alternative. In a traditional, fully insured plan, you pay a fixed premium. The insurance carrier takes all the risk, but they also take all the reward. If your crew has a healthy year with low claims, the carrier keeps your unused premium dollars.
A level-funded health plan is a modern, alternative health strategy that perfectly blends the predictability of traditional insurance with the massive cost-saving potential of self-funding.
Here is how it works:
- Predictable Monthly Payments: Just like traditional insurance, you pay a fixed, level monthly fee. This makes budgeting and forecasting easy for your back office.
- Stop-Loss Protection: Your monthly fee includes stop-loss insurance. This acts as an iron-clad safety net. If an employee suffers a catastrophic, high-cost medical event, the stop-loss policy kicks in, completely capping your company’s financial liability.
- The Year-End Refund: Here is the game-changer. A portion of your monthly payment goes into a dedicated claims fund to pay for your workforce’s medical needs. At the end of the year, if your team was healthy and those claims funds weren’t spent, you get the money back.
With a level-funded plan, you finally get to keep the savings generated by your own healthy workforce.
Why Lazy Brokers Hide This From You
If alternative health programs are so great, why hasn’t your current broker offered you one?
The harsh reality is that most traditional brokers operate as simple quoting machines. They take your employee census, submit it to the same standard big-box carriers every year, and bring you back a spreadsheet. Because their commissions are often tied to the total size of your premium, they have zero financial incentive to lower your costs.
Implementing an alternative, level-funded health plan requires deep industry knowledge, aggressive negotiation, and a willingness to do the heavy lifting. Lazy brokers simply aren’t built for that. They would rather pass the buck, blame “the market” for your skyrocketing renewal, and collect their check.
Texas specialty contractors deserve better.
The ABS Advantage: Institutional Buying Power
You cannot afford a weak partner when it comes to your employee benefits. ABS is the proudly endorsed insurance partner of associations throughout the state of Texas. Because of this legacy, we command massive institutional buying power and true economies of scale.
We utilize exclusive master-contracts to pull your business out of the volatile, community-rated insurance pools. By leveraging these heavily negotiated rates, we routinely save construction and construction-related companies 20% to 30% on their employee benefit plans while delivering equal or superior coverage.
We know the trades. We know that your workforce needs robust coverage to stay healthy and productive on the job site. But we also know that you shouldn’t have to sacrifice your margins to provide it.
Included Value-Added Services: We Do the Heavy Lifting
At ABS, we know that delivering a highly profitable level-funded health plan is only half the battle. Managing HR compliance, outsourced ASO (Administrative Services Only) tasks, and benefits administration takes your focus away from winning bids and executing projects.
That is why we act as a true extension of your back office. When you partner with ABS, we provide an unmatched suite of premium, included value-added services at absolutely no additional cost to your company:
- COBRA Administration: Completely managed by our team to keep you fully compliant without the administrative headache.
- 1094/1095 ACA Reporting: We handle the complex IRS reporting so your business doesn’t face steep, unexpected federal penalties.
- PCORI Fee Calculations: Calculated and prepared for you automatically.
- Claims Adjudication: If an employee has a claim improperly denied, our team fights the carriers on their behalf, keeping your HR team off the phone.
- Employee Navigator: We provide a state-of-the-art Employee Benefits Administration System to streamline your onboarding and enrollment.
- Access to an Employee Labor Law Firm: Expert legal guidance to protect your business in a complex, ever-changing regulatory environment.
You handle the job site. We handle the paperwork.
Stop Accepting the Status Quo
You would never let a material supplier arbitrarily raise their prices by 20% every year without fiercely negotiating or finding a better vendor. It is time to treat your employee health benefits with that exact same level of financial scrutiny.
You build Texas. We protect your business. Good for your team. Great for your bottom line.
Ready to stop overpaying for traditional health insurance? Take the guesswork out of your next renewal. Get a Free Cost Analysis from ABS today. It is completely frictionless. We don’t need lengthy applications or complex plan designs upfront. Provide us with a simple, recent employee census spreadsheet, and our experts will show you exactly how our institutional buying power and level-funded strategies can transform your balance sheet.
