Samantha Wellington, TriNet Business Affairs CEO and Chief Legal Officer, said: “Everyone wants to comply with the rules, but in the macro environment there are different ways you can respond to what’s going on around you. “Every action you take speaks volumes about you as an employer.”
Disney, Target, Netflix, JPMorgan Chase and other major corporations have announced that their health care plans will cover travel for abortions. After the court decision Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.
With operations across the country, large companies are accustomed to judicial records, and the nature of self-insured health plans sponsored by many large employers means they are not regulated by states. Many of these companies already cover medical travel, including abortion travel, in their plans.
But for small employers, the calculations are very complicated. They have fewer resources and tend to have fully insured health care plans, in which insurance companies take financial responsibility for claims. Those plans are subject to state insurance laws, which may limit their ability to cover abortion travel costs in states with restrictions or restrictions.
And while more than 100 large companies have taken public action against abortion bans — from covering abortion travel to donating to reproductive rights organizations — about half of companies with fewer than 500 employees have taken similar steps, according to a track record by Rhia Ventures, an investment fund focused on reproductive rights.
Yet they account for a large share of American employers: Of the 32.6 million businesses in the United States, fewer than 21,000 have 500 or more employees, according to the Small Business and Entrepreneurship Council.
Trinet was able to respond quickly to the challenges presented. Dobbs Decisions are based on “deep knowledge” of benefits design and “the types of products and offerings that small and medium-sized businesses need to be relevant as employers in today’s marketplace,” Wellington said. And the company’s scalable service model has enabled TriNet to deploy new products quickly.
In addition to travel reimbursement for medical care, Trinet is offering its 23,000 customers the opportunity to help with adoption travel expenses. TriNet, as the plan administrator, handles claims processing and compensation payments, allowing workers who need help to remain anonymous to their employers.
The anonymity element is critical because companies that help their employees seek out-of-state abortions could be at risk of criminal liability in Texas, Missouri and several other states to target people who “facilitate and prevent” abortions.
“From a customer perspective, you can say, ‘We don’t have that information,'” Wellington said.
Derek Steer, co-founder and chief strategy officer at Mode, a data analytics software company, was one of the first customers to acquire Trinet. Dobbs Decision. With 58 of the Mode 250 workers in states that have already approved or are moving toward abortion bans, Steer knew workers wanted a solution.
“We’re at a time when people expect their companies to do more for them,” says Steer. Sometimes they look to businesses when they feel the government has failed them.
If the company is going to track travel benefits, ensuring anonymity should be a priority, he said. But as a small company, “this is almost logistically impossible for us,” Steer said. “With the help of someone like Trinette, I don’t know if we can achieve the kind of program that people want.”
Steer said they see this benefit as a way to protect the health and safety of their employees by providing them with equal access to medical care. Offering attractive benefits can help small companies like Mod keep up with intense competition for talent, he said.
“Part of finding the best talent is being a leading employer in terms of the benefits we offer, but increasingly being an employer willing to take a stand on key issues that people care about,” Steer said. “This is one example of how we can do it right as a team and when we do that, be an attractive place to work for those people, especially when their options are some of the bigger companies with more resources.”
