Last month’s cold snap caught most of the country. Running a construction company, I was especially concerned about my team, as they drive across the Midwest, build new homes and climb on icy roofs.
It’s a risky business. We’re not working in nice, warm offices. Our teams are out there in hot summers and cold winters, doing hard, physical work. We need to know they’ll be looked after if an accident happens.
That’s why I pay attention when lawmakers do things that could increase my company’s health insurance costs. For example, there’s talk about heavily regulating or even banning Pharmacy Benefit Managers (PBMs) in Kansas — but these are the same companies that helped my health insurance broker keep coverage affordable for my company and our two dozen employees.
If they close or move out of state, health insurance and care costs don’t disappear — they are passed on to my staff and me.
Quality health insurance is why one of my employees was able to return to work and manage his health care costs last year, after he got hurt in a freak accident. He was a relatively new hire, when he was injured on a job site and ended up with a collapsed lung. At the time, he was a healthy guy in his early 30s. Then, suddenly, he’s in and out of the hospital.
That kind of thing hits you hard when you care about your team, particularly because he’s got a wife and a daughter to look after. For me, the first priority was making sure he could get the care he needed immediately after the injury, and ensuring that he was able to quickly return to full health.
That’s where I learned just how well our health insurance broker was taking care of everyone. Under our previous coverage, the company and the employee would have had to pay thousands of dollars more out of pocket during his hospital stay and post-hospital recovery.
It’s not just on-site accidents that worry me. We have business across several states, which means a lot of time on the road — driving on bad highways through terrible weather. That’s why affordable, high-quality health insurance isn’t some abstract issue to me. It’s about real people and real families.
Injuries happen in construction. That’s the chance we all take every time we get out on site to do our jobs. For any responsible leader, making sure your team has the care it needs is non-negotiable. Walls are easily rebuilt when they fall down. If a roof blows off in a storm, you can just put another one on. Yes, that takes time and money, but repairs are worth the cost.
It’s not so easy to fix the human body.
The health of my team is a priority, so we’ll pay whatever it takes to make sure they can come to work every day knowing that if the worst happens, our insurance will look after them. If premiums get too high, our company’s future is put at risk — not just because we can’t afford to grow the company, but also because we won’t be able to afford to make sure our people are taken care of.
I’m not a health care expert or a policy guru. You won’t catch me at fancy dinners with the bigwigs in the capital. What I am is a small business owner who can see how a PBM has helped my company, and how they can help small businesses across the state.
Kansans literally can’t afford to let lawmakers make insurance more expensive by targeting the part of the system that is working. The health of my team and their families depend on them.
Will Pieper is the owner of PAR Construction, which has operations in Kansas, Missouri, and several other Midwest states.
Clinton Mora is a reporter for Trending Insurance News. He has previously worked for the Forbes. As a contributor to Trending Insurance News, Clinton covers emerging a wide range of property and casualty insurance related stories.