According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, 67 percent of covered workers were covered through self-funded plans in 2020, and that percentage increases significantly – to 84% – among employers with 200+ employees. This puts charter management organizations in stark contrast to the broader business community which have increasingly turned to self-funded plans.

In 2019, BuyQ published the results of a national charter management organization (CMO) health benefits survey that found that the vast majority (87%) of CMOs with 100 or more employees still rely on fully insured plans to provide health benefits to their staff despite the financial pressures these plans are putting on their organizations.

It felt out of control.”ĭSST’s experience is all too common among charter management organizations according to Marco Rafanelli, CEO of the charter school group purchasing organization BuyQ. “Either we’d get an unexpectedly large bill or a relatively less large bill. “Every year there was a big surprise,” Wiegner explained. But it was yet another notice from their insurance carrier warning of a massive annual premium increase that finally pushed the organization’s leadership to seek a better way of doing business.Īshley Wiegner, Chief People Officer for the 16-charter school organization, says DSST was driven by leadership’s desire to end a destabilizing and often frustrating cycle of steep premium hikes, insurance carrier-hopping and painful fiscal tradeoffs.

For close to 15 years, Denver-based DSST Public Schools tolerated life under a fully insured health benefits plan, with all the financial strain and uncertainty it brought.

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