Stoughton Trailers beefs up benefits

July 15--EVANSVILLE -- Jordan Everson had surgery to remove his appendix more than a year ago, and his daughter was born two years ago.

He's still paying off the medical bills for both--even though he's covered under health insurance through his employer, Stoughton Trailers.

For Everson, a quality control manager at Stoughton Trailers' Evansville plant, and for the more than 1,300 people who work at its plants in Rock and Dane counties, company health insurance is going to become much more affordable.

Under a sweeping set of changes the semitrailer manufacturer recently announced, Stoughton Trailers will cut in half the time new employees have to wait for health benefits. And the company has begun to broaden its coverage to include services it never covered before, including chiropractic and psychiatric care.

The beefed-up benefits come even though Stoughton Trailers has frozen employee premiums for three years running.

Meanwhile, the company has begun picking up the tab to activate disability insurance for workers--and it has activated a new medical co-pay system it says has slashed out-of-pocket costs. Workers now pay as little as $30 for many doctor's office or other care visits.

Such changes might seem unusual, even an anachronism, considering that many companies are asking employees to pay more for their insurance coverage. Others have pared back hiring full-time employees or scaled back workers' hours to limit the number of employees who get insurance under the federal Affordable Care Act.

Yet as unemployment numbers fall and companies compete for workers, Stoughton Trailers officials say health insurance upgrades have become necessary to retain good employees and attract new ones, said Jeff Hackel, vice president of human resources.

The company is in growth mode. It is trying to retain more workers and recruit new hires to expand work at its plants, including its Evansville plant, which now employs about 85 workers.

Through surveys, the company learned current workers and some prospective employees believed the company's self-funded health care coverage was lacking.

"People we're recruiting to work here are more educated on health insurance benefits than they were in the past. And we've had some longer-term employees tell us, 'I'd love to stay here, but so-and-so corporation just has better or more affordable insurance.' We don't want that," Hackel said.

"We're trying to position ourselves to become a destination employer, and the changes we're making, they're part of a multi-pronged plan to get there.'"

Hackle said the insurance upgrades, which took effect June 1, are in tandem with other measures that address baseline pay and bonus programs as well as training and skills development.

The company gets coverage through Alliance, a Madison-based umbrella consortium of companies that self-fund insurance coverage.

Hackel said before the insurance changes, the average worker paid up to $3,600 a year for family coverage, and most employees spent up to 11 percent of their salaries on health care coverage.

Under the changes, those workers' out-of-pocket costs will decrease by up to 45 percent. For some employees, what would have been a $500 doctor's visit is now $30, Hackel said.

That's an anomaly in industry. According to a national survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation, the average worker with single-employee company health insurance paid $1,300 in deductibles in 2015. That's compared to $580 in 2006, according to the same survey.

Another survey from the International Foundation of Employee Benefits Plans showed that nearly 40 percent of companies have boosted maximum out-of-pocket payments for employees, and more than 30 percent of companies have asked employees for increased deductible and premium payouts.

Hackel said Stoughton Trailers employees with anxiety, depression and other mental health issues previously could not get psychiatric care through the company's insurance. Treatment, if they opted to get it, was paid for out of pocket.

Now, in most cases, a visit to a mental health care provider will cost a worker $30.

The company also plans to expand the availability of nurses at the low-cost clinics it offers at its plants, and it will expand coverage at those clinics to employees' family members. That makes what is a relatively rare health care amenity an even greater asset to Stoughton Trailers and its workers.

Everson, a 30-year-old millennial with a wife and two daughters, says he's noticed a big difference in the few short weeks the new health care coverage has been in place.

"Stoughton Trailers in the past, I'll say, wasn't exactly known for its insurance coverage. But since the change, I've noticed that when people are sick, they're actually going to the doctor. They can afford that," Everson said.

Everson said he has started seeing a chiropractor for the first time in a couple of years.

"Having something like that be affordable for people who work on the floor, they can just go and do it now, it's a big difference to people," he said. "You don't realize what a big burden these costs are until they're kind of lifted.

"You're in a hot place; it's still hard work, but there's been an immediate morale boost. You can feel it."

___

(c)2016 The Janesville Gazette (Janesville, Wis.)

Visit The Janesville Gazette (Janesville, Wis.) at www.gazetteextra.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.