Understanding Premium Types

Understanding Premium Types

What premium types are

When you set up a plan in BerniePortal or submit a buildout request, you choose a premium type. The premium type controls how rates are entered for the plan and how those rates are applied to each enrollee — for example, whether every enrollee in a coverage tier pays the same rate or whether the rate changes by age.

Four premium types are available: Composite, Age Banded, Age Banded (Three Table), and Age Banded Multiperson. Which of these you can choose from depends on the benefit type — most flat-rate ancillary benefits, like Dental and Vision, only use Composite, while Health plans can use any of the four.

Composite

Composite rates are a flat dollar amount for each coverage tier (Employee Only, Employee + Spouse, Employee + Child(ren), Employee + Family), regardless of the employee's or a dependent's age. Every enrollee in the same coverage tier pays the same premium.

Age Banded

Age Banded premiums come from a single age-band table. Each band covers a range of ages (for example, 0–14, 15–15, 16–16, and so on), and BerniePortal applies that same set of age bands to the employee and every covered dependent.

This premium type also supports an optional dependent limit: a cap on how many dependents can be charged a premium, up to a set age.

Age Banded (Three Table)

Age Banded (Three Table) uses separate age-band tables for the Employee and the Spouse, each with its own set of age bands and premiums. Child premiums are entered by Number of Children instead of an age band. This premium type is only available for Health plans.

Age Banded Multiperson

Age Banded Multiperson combines coverage tiers with age bands: each coverage tier (Employee Only, Employee + Spouse, and so on) gets its own column of premiums for every age band, so both the enrollee's age and the coverage tier they choose determine the rate.
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