ODA Wellness Trust offers affordable health benefit plans for ODA members
The Ohio Dental Association Services Corp. (ODASC) launched the ODA Wellness Trust in March 2015 to create an affordable health benefit option for ODA member dentists and their staffs.
The Ohio Dental Association Wellness Trust is a self-insured employer plan that allows participants to avoid some of the regulations and requirements of the Affordable Care Act. The Wellness Trust is a private, dentist-owned, self-funded health benefit plan, developed by ODA member dentists for ODA member dentists and their staffs to provide high quality health insurance at affordable rates.
The ODA Wellness Trust is a self-insured health insurance plan, which has many advantages including the ability to design plan and deductible options, choose networks and features, and keep costs low by avoiding the state insurance premium tax and many of the ACA’s mandated taxes. According to industry research, a typical self-insured group can expect to save more than 10 percent (versus traditional health insurance) without having to sacrifice quality of care.
To date, the ODA Wellness trust has more than 1,300 participants from more than 620 dental offices.
Offices who participate in the ODA Wellness Trust have found some of the Wellness Trust‘s most attractive features to be low deductible plan options, lower co-pays and lower out of pocket limits than other health insurance plans; an extensive provider network with a broad choice of hospitals and competitive prices.
The Wellness Trust is an employer plan, which means that offices that enroll in the trust are required to offer insurance to all full-time employees (defined as those employees working 25-30 hours or more per week). No employer contribution is required, and employees are allowed to decline the coverage by completing a waiver form.
While the ODA Wellness Trust is an employer plan, the group requirements were designed to be flexible and fit the needs of smaller dental offices.
Participants have found that an employer plan may be advantageous to dental offices even if the dentist chooses not to make a contribution to employees’ premiums because employees can use pre-tax dollars to pay for the premiums, whereas an individual plan’s premiums would need to be paid for with after tax dollars.The ODA Wellness Trust is only available to ODA members and their staffs. The best time to enroll in the ODA Wellness Trust is generally during the open enrollment period in October to coincide with calendar-based deductibles and co-insurance, but member dentists can call the ODA at any time for more information about enrolling in the plan.
ODASC employees are available to answer questions about the ODA Wellness Trust and help dentists decide which plan is right for their office. They are licensed insurance agents who are salary-based and do not make a commission on sales, so they always have ODA members’ best interests at heart.
For more information, visit www.odawt.org or call (800) 282-1526.