What
it means for the employer:
The employer
gets a chance to renew its contract with the carriers. It can renew the
contracts, with discussions to bring the Premium price down. It can also work with the carriers to get
more lucrative plans and implement them.
For
the carrier:
This is the time
when the Carriers will restructure their plans to attract employers. They will
negotiate rates with the Employers and set up Premium prices.
For
the Employee:
As an employee,
one need not have to wait for any life event. Open is the time, where all
eligible options are actually part of one’s electable options (In most cases).
So the employee can go and make elections for the next plan year and plan his
expenditure towards his health coverage well in advance. Apart from that, many
employers launch awareness plans during this time, where the employee gets to
read and answer few questionnaires and in return they get some percentage of
their rates off.
For
a Functional Consultant:
For a
consultant, it means a lot of work. : )
To be more
specific, Employers might drop a lot of plans and add new, to support new
Carriers. The benefit Structure changes, and so does the eligibility and
enrolment structure of Non-Schedule life events for next plan year.
The changes
might also include new interfaces/ extracts to the new carriers that are added,
and changes to the existing. So while configuring Open, one must plan well in
advance and take ample time in hand before the enrolment windows open.