Does a company who provides a group health insurance package ever find out how much the employee uses the coverage?

They probably get statistics on their employees scrubbed of identifying information.

We had a shared pool “self insurance” plan years ago, and the employer had total expenses for each year per employee – this was about 1994 to ‘96. I am pretty sure this would violate something now.

Nobody ever tells us. We have a small group policy.

I think HIPPA is supposed to make that illegal. However I would not be surprised if there are ways of getting the info or making damn good guesses. If you are a small company and you know an employee has some kind of cancer, it’s hard to scrub the info without giving away the store.

Of course. The benefits/HR people have access to your records.

We have a MERP(Medical Expense Reimbursement Plan) in our practice. We reimburse the employees for any deductible they spend over 1500.00 So, I do know when employees eat up their deductible because I have an explanation of benefit showing me how much I need to reimburse them. I try to know as little as possible about my employees’ health. It is none of my business. When I started there the employees would often see the docs in the practice for their primary care. I put a stop to this practice because of liability. If you have an unsatisfactory employee who also happens to have a serious health issue they could sue and say you fired them because you knew of their health condition.