If you run a construction or construction-related company in Texas, you are intimately familiar with the rising costs of doing business. Whether it’s copper, concrete, fleet fuel, or labor, you know how to manage the margins on the job site. But there is one line item on your balance sheet that seems to defy logic, continuously skyrocketing year after year: your employee health benefits.
If your traditional insurance broker just drops a 15% to 20% renewal increase on your desk every year and blames “the market,” they aren’t giving you the whole story. A massive driver of your escalating healthcare costs comes down to international politics and global economics.
Specifically, foreign drug price controls are acting as a massive, hidden tax on your Texas business.
A recent opinion piece published by Fox News brilliantly outlines this exact problem. The U.S. pays significantly more for prescription drugs because foreign governments legally cap pharmaceutical prices, creating severe trade distortions that shift the immense burden of medical innovation straight onto the backs of American employers.
Here is what that means for the companies that build Texas—and how Association Benefit Solutions (ABS) is helping commercial builders and the skilled trades fight back.
The Hidden Tax on American Employers
To understand why your employee benefits renewal is so painful, you have to look at the pharmacy side of your health plan. Developing a single new breakthrough drug costs billions of dollars in Research and Development (R&D). Pharmaceutical companies must recoup those massive investments to survive and continue innovating.
However, countries across Europe and elsewhere impose strict drug price controls. They dictate to pharmaceutical companies exactly what they are willing to pay, capping prices artificially low. Because these foreign markets refuse to pay their fair share of the R&D costs, pharmaceutical companies are forced to make up the difference in the only free market left: the United States.
As the Fox News article explains, these foreign price caps mean that Americans are essentially subsidizing the healthcare of the rest of the world.
But who is really paying that bill? It’s not just the individual at the pharmacy counter. It’s the American employer. When pharmacy claims on your company’s health plan explode because of these cost-shifting tactics, your traditional insurance carrier raises your premiums. Then, your lazy, traditional broker walks into your office once a year, hands you an inflated renewal, shrugs, and tells you there’s nothing you can do.
They are wrong.
Why Traditional Brokers Are Failing the Trades
For decades, the standard broker model has been to simply quote your group with the standard big-box carriers, accept whatever generic premium increase is handed down, and collect their commission. They don’t dig into why your costs are rising. They don’t evaluate the pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) hiding inside your plan. They just pass the buck.
Texas specialty contractors operate on hard-fought margins. You cannot afford to write a blank check to subsidize global healthcare inefficiencies. You need a broker who operates as a true partner, not a quoting machine.
The ABS Solution: Institutional Buying Power
Operating in Texas since 1978, Association Benefit Solutions (ABS) is the proudly endorsed insurance partner of associations throughout the state of Texas. We know the skilled trades, and we know that a one-size-fits-all, fully insured health plan is a losing game for your balance sheet.
Instead of accepting the standard increases driven by systemic issues like foreign drug price controls, ABS takes a completely different approach. We utilize exclusive master-contracts, massive institutional buying power, and true economies of scale to secure superior coverage at highly negotiated rates.
Here is how we aggressively combat rising pharmacy and healthcare costs for construction and construction-related companies:
- Level-Funded and Self-Funded Plans: We pull you out of the volatile community-rated pools. By utilizing alternative, modern health plans, you only pay for the healthcare your workforce actually consumes. If your team is healthy, you keep the savings—not the insurance company.
- Pharmacy Carve-Outs: We don’t accept the inflated, opaque drug pricing built into standard plans. Our alternative health strategies actively manage pharmacy costs, ensuring your plan isn’t being drained by exorbitant specialty drug markups.
- Proactive Claims Management: We actively monitor the health of your plan throughout the year, meaning you will never be surprised by a renewal again.
On average, we save our clients 20% to 30% on their employee benefit plans while delivering equal or superior coverage to their workforce. Good for your team. Great for your bottom line.
We Do the Heavy Administrative Lifting
Delivering a better, more cost-effective health plan is only half the battle. We know that managing outsourced HR (ASO), compliance, and benefits administration takes your focus away from running your business and winning bids.
That is why ABS acts as an extension of your back office. We take the heavy administrative lifting off your desk so you can focus on the job site. 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 compliant.
- 1094/1095 ACA Reporting: We handle the complex IRS reporting so you don’t face steep penalties.
- PCORI Fee Calculations: Calculated and prepared for you automatically.
- Claims Adjudication: We fight for your employees if a claim is improperly denied, so your HR team doesn’t have to spend hours on hold.
- Employee Navigator: A state-of-the-art Employee Benefits Administration System provided entirely to streamline your onboarding and enrollment.
- Access to an Employee Labor Law Firm: Expert legal guidance to protect your business in a complex regulatory environment.
Stop Subsidizing the Status Quo
You wouldn’t accept a material supplier arbitrarily raising their prices by 20% every year without looking for a better vendor. It is time to treat your employee benefits with that same level of financial scrutiny.
You build Texas. We protect your business. Don’t let global drug price controls and lazy brokers dictate your bottom line for another year.
Ready to see how much your business is overpaying? Take the guesswork out of your next renewal. Get a Free Cost Analysis from ABS today. It is completely frictionless—no lengthy applications or plan designs required upfront. All we need is a simple, recent employee census spreadsheet, and our experts will show you exactly how our institutional buying power can transform your balance sheet.
