Health benefits are usually a charter school's second-largest expense after payroll — yet most leaders can't see inside the plan they're paying for. Not because the information doesn't exist, but because nobody has shown it to them. This five-question self-assessment is the fastest way to find out whether your broker is giving you the full picture. Answer honestly; each question signals something specific about how your plan is being managed.
Download the printable audit (PDF)
1. Do you have access to detailed claims data, broken down by member and category?
Without member- and category-level claims data, you can't see what's actually driving cost. Is it pharmacy? A handful of high-cost claimants? Emergency room utilization? A broker who doesn't have access to that data — or has it and never shares it — can't be helping you manage your spend. They can only react to whatever number the carrier hands down at renewal.
2. Is your monthly carrier bill reconciled against your employee roster automatically — or does someone do it manually?
Manual reconciliation means paying for people who've left and missing people who've joined. In a school with normal staff turnover, those errors compound every month. A good broker automates this so your bill matches reality — and finds the credits when it hasn't.
3. Do you know whether your plan is fully insured, level funded, or self funded?
Each structure carries different risk, cash flow, and savings potential. Fully insured means the carrier keeps every dollar of a good claims year. Level funded returns surplus to you. Self funded gives you the most control and the most responsibility. If you can't name which one your school has, no one has walked you through what your structure means — and that's a choice someone else made for you.
4. Does your staff have access to a price transparency or care coordination tool?
The same MRI can cost $400 or $4,000 depending on where it's performed. Without a transparency or care coordination tool, staff shop blind and default to the ER for routine care — and every one of those decisions flows straight into next year's renewal. A broker who never mentioned this kind of tool isn't helping your people spend their benefit wisely.
5. Did your broker walk you through alternative funding structures at your last renewal?
Captives, independent level-funded plans, reference-based pricing — if renewal was just a rate increase with no alternatives presented, you were quoted, not advised. A broker doing the work shows you every viable structure, every year, even when the answer is "stay put."
How to score yourself
If you answered "no" (or "manual") to two or more of these, your broker may be leaving money and options on the table. That's not an accusation — it's the predictable result of a generalist model applied to schools. The fix starts with a conversation, not a commitment: a complimentary review will show you exactly what you're not being shown today.