COLLINSVILLE, Conn. — May 23, 2023 — Sola Health has launched a portfolio of self-funded health plans that deliver premium medical and pharmacy coverage at a lower cost. With these modern plan designs, Sola is helping employers of all sizes break free from the skyrocketing premium and renewal costs commonly experienced with fully insured carriers.
“In the last 15 years, 82 percent of Fortune 500 companies ditched their insurance carriers,” says Steve Palma, president of Sola. “Smaller employers are looking to follow suit. Fully insured models—and their relentless cost increases—are forcing employers to offload more financial burden onto their employees or reduce benefit offerings to compensate. Sola is changing that paradigm.”
As part of the Goodroot community of companies, Sola is on a mission to address rising healthcare costs for employers and their people. Aside from zero-dollar care, Sola plans include proven, targeted solutions for high-cost medical and pharmacy claims—a true differentiator for employers in the self-funded market.
“Upon exploring self-funded plan options for our own company, it became clear that if we were going to provide best-in-class plans—with the desired cost structure, features and benefits—we would need to create them ourselves,” says Goodroot CEO Mike Waterbury. “Self-funding isn’t an overnight win for most groups. It is a long-term savings strategy, one that needs to be closely monitored, data interpreted and policies and strategies need to flex as trends are spotted. With Sola, we’ve built a team that understands these complexities and are making the solutions easy for groups to understand and implement.”
From level-funded plans with major national carrier networks to more aggressive value-based pricing plans, Sola caters to varying degrees of self-funding experience. And their team guides groups new to self-funding through the transition, mitigating unseen risks and protecting businesses from potential high-cost claims and employee disruption.
And it’s not just the employer who benefits from Sola Health. With the company’s user-friendly mobile app—employees can easily manage their prescriptions, access digital ID cards, track deductibles and more. The Sola app also integrates benefit navigation, 24/7 free virtual care and hospital financial assistance applications to ensure employees have dozens of ways to save on healthcare.
“Member experience is paramount for us,” says Palma. “We’re not your typical, run of the mill health plan provider and we don’t want to be. Yes, the savings are tremendous, but the experience is too. Sola makes switching to self-funding easy—and less scary. In addition, we do not believe in a “set it and forget it until renewal season” approach to managing our clients’ healthcare benefits. We monitor each group’s healthcare data throughout the year and identify trends and solutions for improving outcomes and reducing costs.”
While Sola serves groups of all sizes, their primary focus is on those with 25-200 employees. This segment is frequently underserved and often unaware that self-funding is a viable alternative to traditional healthcare funding methods.
