The Burri and Company name and brand has become synonymous with personalized service. As a national benefits insurance agency that provides services to Catholic employers and their employees, we have the knowledge and capabilities to deliver a wide range of health benefit plans, programs and services personalized to meet your unique needs.
Burri and Company implements programs that are unique to each client. These programs are designed with not only our knowledge and expertise but perhaps more importantly with our client's input. In order to meet your goals, we have partnered with some of the largest insurance companies and some of the smaller, more specialized firms that cater to those clients that are looking for superior service and flexible plan designs.
In our history we have grown from providing insurance from one small religious order to one of the nation's largest insurance agencies providing health insurance exclusively serving the Catholic Church.
Burri and Company provides medical, pharmacy, Medicare supplements, Medicare Part D drug coverage, dental, vision, life, AD&D, long and short-term disability coverage, even international major medical insurance and services to members in every state in the country.
We offer innovative solutions for Catholic institutions that provide employers with more flexibility than ever. Rather than selecting from a portfolio of standard off-the-shelf products, our experts can work with you and with our partner companies to design a plan to meet the needs of employees and employers in and key areas:
Overall Strategy
- Benefit design
Most providers or agencies are either going to give you two or three benefit and funding designs or are going to bombard you with many different options hoping there is one you like. Both of these approaches require little work on the part of the broker or provider. At Burri and Company we understand that there are literally thousands of changes in a benefit design that could be implemented that would not only directly affect your premiums but the overall effectiveness, success and/or failure of your health plan. By comparing the current policies benefit designs, the premiums and utilizing our years of expertise, we will offer you a comprehensive benefits package that serves the needs of the order while at the same time causes as little disruption as possible to what your employees and religious have now. We are one of the ONLY companies experienced enough to do it right the first time for you. Do not let yourselves be a guinea pig for a 'local' agency.
- Funding type
Your diocese or order may be able to access a number of different funding alternatives. Third-party administration (TPA), Partial Self-insured, Rebate Plans, Minimum Premium Plans and fully-insured (pre-pay) are some of the different funding options available to you, each providing their own risks and unique opportunities. We have used all of these funding models with different religious orders and diocese and are experienced in the unique capabilities of all of them.
- Medical management intensity
An order or diocese may choose from PPO's (Preferred Provider Organizations), POS's (Point of Service Organizations) or Managed Care (HMO's). Again, there are advantages and disadvantages with all of these. They each can have mandates or benefits such as, forced generic drugs, free wellness programs, emergency room penalty co-pays, just to name a few. Designing the right plan for your order/diocese requires an experienced firm with the expertise to guide you through all these options and create a benefit package(s) that works best for you.
- Consumerism
Health insurance underwriting is based on the philosophy of understanding how, when and who uses a particular health insurance model and how much it costs. From our experience Catholic religious orders and diocesan employees seldom fit these off-the-shelf models. Clearly religious and lay employees will use the health plan differently and have different needs and concerns. A lay employee, for example, might be very concerned about maternity coverage where as a sister may be more concerned about routine foot care or limiting the amount of cash she needs to carry, if any. By understanding these complexities, we are able to effectively design plans that meet these needs not typically considered by other firms or providers.
- Network configuration and effectiveness
This can be the primary factor that will determine a healthcare plan's success or failure. Quite simply networks are groups of healthcare providers that have negotiated prices, discounts and savings for directing patients to use their services. An analogy we use is that of modern air travel. Prior to the advent of the computer age, airlines charged the same simple ticket price for a flight. Now, on any given flight, it would be difficult to find any two people that paid the same price for their ticket. This one plane that takes everyone to same destination at the same time could have ticket prices from a few dollars to a couple of thousand. Most healthcare providers belong to several different networks and grant discounts usually based on the number of people in a given area they insure and the amount of discount the provider wants. Many of the country's largest providers own their own nationally proprietary networks. They provide insurance for millions and have negotiated very deep discounts in different areas of the country. This can provide an incredible advantage to an order or diocese when it comes to direct savings. Some of our other insurers own some networks while they may rent others allowing us to provide multi-network overlays within a single plan allowing a group to get the deepest possible discounts in all of its locations. And then there are companies that rent all of their networks and therefore do not have near the direct saving as a large national insurer.
We work with clients to create benefit programs that meet their business objectives and are maintained to the constraints of Canon Law. This is done by providing solutions that address the specific demands of a more mature and active population of its members while concurrently addressing the needs and concerns of your lay employees. We actually hire Canon lawyers to review our policy designs.