The problem: A $7,000 deductible and one-size-fits-all insurance
Center for Policy Research (CPR) is a Denver-based nonprofit founded in 1981 by Dr. Jessica Pearson, doing child support policy research and studies on homelessness and domestic violence for state and federal agencies. Its staff fluctuates between 10 and 15 people. For years, the organization ran its benefits through a broker and an Anthem group plan. The deductible sat at $7,000, and it took one employee's emergency surgery, and the bill that came with it, for Santos to decide the group plan wasn't serving the team.
A webinar first introduced Office Manager Dolores Santos to employee health benefits through a different ICHRA provider. The initial setup didn't go smoothly: three employees went unenrolled during open enrollment, and Santos described it as complete chaos. CPR dropped that vendor and was introduced to Thatch shortly after. This is now the organization's second open enrollment year on Thatch, and Santos says the org has been happy with the switch ever since.
The result: Lower costs, while covering more people
Every CPR employee now pays $10 a month, with the organization covering the rest, and each person picks the plan that actually fits them. Two employees have added spouses to their coverage — something nobody did under the previous group plan.
The old group plan's premiums barely moved with age. A 25-year-old employee and a 36-year-old employee on the same plan paid rates just $75 a month apart, even though the plan was supposed to be priced by age. With Thatch, that difference is visible: pricing actually reflects each person's situation instead of landing in roughly the same place for everyone.
On the admin side, Thatch's dashboard flags compliance tasks and includes an enrollment tracker that shows who has enrolled and who hasn't. Payments are handled too: each month, Thatch automatically debits the premiums for the plans employees picked, based on what each carrier charges, instead of Santos writing a check.
It's a different way of handling benefits than the traditional one, where everything ran through a broker and back-and-forth phone calls, and it took some adjustment. But once Santos got used to it, she found plenty of ways to get help, and the dashboard made clear exactly what needed to happen and when. For a small non-profit without a dedicated benefits staffer, a self-service platform like that is what makes offering real, individualized coverage possible at all.