Health Care and Other Benefits for Human Resources

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Health care is one of the basic factors that firms are always forced to offer to their employees. Firms in the current world find it very difficult to operate because of the competitive working environment. This working environment is so competitive that firms are always forced to find ways of reducing any little cost of operations that can be reduced. According to Gordon (2006), the world has become so competitive because of the increasing number of firms that offer similar products in the market.

This means that the number of suppliers will remain relatively smaller. Suppliers will have a wider choice of who to offer their products. This makes suppliers charge higher prices for their products in the market. On the other hand, firms find that they have to compete for the customers. Customers have a wider variety to choose from when they want to make any purchase. They will therefore, demand a cheaper price for the products they purchase.

These results in a situation where firms use more to produce their goods, but they are forced to sell them at a lesser price in order to get the market. This awkward situation forces firms to find mechanisms through which they can cut costs of operation from whichever front. Cutting down the cost of healthcare that a firm has to pay for its employees is one of the ways through which a firm can increase its profitability. This paper is focused on how a firm can successfully cut the cost of health care for its employees.

When the current president of the United States, Mr. Barrack Obama, took office in 2008, one of the most prominent bills that he sponsored was the healthcare bill. Also popularly known as Obamacare, this bill has had a massive impact to the entire society in general (Goff, 2011). It is a fact that this bill helped ensure that every American, poor or rich, has access to free medical attention. This was a positive move towards a healthy American society.

However, the burden of this free healthcare for all must be shouldered on some people or organizations in this country. The hardest hit group was probably the employers in this country. Before this legislation, the law was not very strict on how firms would pay for their employees health insurance fund.

Although it was a mandate that firms had to remit a specific amount to the health insurance scheme for this purpose, there was no direct governments hand in this payment. Currently, government strictly dictates how firms should be paying this fee, and the amount that should be paid. The government also regulates strictly, the amount of money that these employees should earn, hence the minimum allowable fee to pay as a health insurance fee.

Human resource must however, find a way of cutting cost of the healthcare it pays to its employees. There are a number of ways through which human resource management can achieve this. The first way of doing this is to contract some of the services from other firms.

Instead of having a fully fledged logistics department with an array of employees, the firm can contract a logistics firm that will be responsible for ensuring that raw materials reach the firm in time, and the products reach the market (Nash, 2010). This will mean that the firm will be cutting down on its employees hence the amount needed for the healthcare insurance will be reduced.

Another way of reducing this cost is by moving a section of the firm outside the country. Apple Inc is one of the most successful American firms in the world. This firm moved its production unit to China. Not only does this firm get cheap labor in this country, but also reduced amount of healthcare insurance bill to pay for its employees.

When a firm moves part of its operational units to another country, the firm shall be avoiding the cost of having to pay high fees for the healthcare as stated in the Healthcare Bill 2010. Another department that can easily be contracted to firms which may even be outside the country is the customer call center. This department can be moved to another country where cost of labor is relatively cheap. India has been one of the most preferred countries for outsourcing of customer call center.

To the employees who remain within the firm, it may not be easily to regulate the amount that the firm will have to pay as their health insurance fund. The Healthcare Bill 2010 clearly stated this amount based on the rank of an employee, and the amount of salary one earns (Dunham, 2011).

However, human resource can still minimize this amount by having a learn firm in terms of employees, especially those at the top level. The management can consider merging some departments, and assigning them to one employee instead of having several top ranking officials. This will ensure that the firm will have lesser number of officials who have to pay high amount of health insurance fund.

References

Dunham, T. (2011). Health care financial management for nurse managers: Merging the heart with the dollar. Sudbury: Jones and Bartlett Publishers.

Goff, L. (2011). Cutting the high cost of health care. New York: Poets & Writers.

Gordon, S. (2006). Nursing against the odds: How health care cost cutting, media stereotypes, and medical hubris undermine nurses and patient care. Ithaca: ILR.

Nash, C. E. (2010). Jiggered: The healthcare insurance industry. New York: Iuniverse Inc.

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Health Care and Other Benefits for Human Resources

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