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What Type of Benefits Can Employees Receive from a Group Plan in Canada?

Posted November 3, 2019 by EasyFinance.com to Insurance 1 0

When working for a company that offers a generous group insurance policy for its staff, the benefits differ between insurers. Therefore, as an employee, you should want to look at the benefits offered under the plan to determine how good the policy is. Too low coverage or too many exclusions and the insurance might not be as useful.

Let’s look at what benefits are sometimes provided in a group policy 

Dispensed Medication

Getting easy access to prescriptions is useful for an employee with a regular prescription to cover chronic or persistent conditions that require it. Staff need an easy way to access the prescription medication required without feeling like they need to complete paperwork in triplicate to get it organised. 

A group plan may sometimes include the TELUS Assure Claims Card. This makes it simpler to purchase medication, get the purchase approved in real-time based on an existing claim on the policy that allows for certain medication to be dispensed. Furthermore, systems like TELUS often have an expanding list of medications that are approved under the policy to cover certain common conditions. 

Emergency Transport of the Patient

In the case of a medical emergency with an employee, many policies include emergency transportation to the nearest relevant hospital for the people covered.

The transportation might be via emergency ground transport such as a priority ambulance or it might be an air ambulance. The decision on which option to provide depends on several factors, including the location, transport links to the nearest hospital, severity of the accident, and more. The insurer and other relevant personnel make this call.

It’s worth noting that there are different private air ambulance services depending on the Canadian province. A larger hospital may also have access to a helicopter too. Some of the private air ambulance services in Canada include Halo Medevac, Integra Air, and Advance Paramedics.

Hearing Aids

For employees who are hard of hearing and require a hearing aid, some group policies include coverage in this area too.

There’s usually a limit on the annual spending for the purchase and setup of a hearing aid system for an employee. The limits will vary per policy but they could be $400, $700 or another value per insured person under a group plan. 

Critical Illness Cover

For some policies, there’s critical illness cover for employees who are unable to work or are seriously ill. The idea behind this type of cover is to help the individual (and/or their family) to handle the financial consequences of not being able to work. 

Depending on the medical diagnosis and policy plan details, a list of illnesses will qualify as a ‘critical illness’ and it is up to the insurer to structure the policy how they see fit in this regard. As a result, some group policies will include illnesses like Bacterial Meningitis or a Burn, whereas it’s entirely possible that some others may not. 

There are too many benefits in the list for more group plans to cover them all in a single article. Clearly, an employee is far better off having the coverage and the potential benefits than the other way around.

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