What is the EBS Bridge™ program?

The EBS Bridge™ is a group gap program that improves employee benefits while lowering the employer's total cost — in two steps. Step one: move to a high-deductible plan with your existing carrier. Same insurance company, same providers, same network — you're simply choosing a leaner plan from the carrier you already have, and premiums drop, sometimes a lot. Step two: layer the Bridge on top. It pays secondary to your primary plan, buying back the deductible and out-of-pocket exposure so employees end up in essentially the same place — or better. The program works because the savings from step one exceed the cost of step two — and that's not a slogan, it's the test: we run the math on your census first, and we only recommend the Bridge when it clears.

What makes the Bridge a Bridge

• It's a secondary plan. Your primary insurance company processes every claim first; the Bridge then picks up the deductible and coinsurance pieces and pays the provider directly.
• It works with any carrier. BCBSM, BCN, Priority Health, HAP, Aetna, Cigna, United — the Bridge layers on top of any group health plan. You don't change carriers to add it, and you don't change carriers to keep it.
• No separate network. The Bridge follows your primary carrier's network, because it pays after your primary plan does. If your doctor is in network today, nothing changes.
• Guarantee-issue — no medical questions. Every eligible employee is covered. No underwriting, no health questionnaires, no claims-history review. Coverage is approved by the fact of employment, not the state of anyone's health.
• Renewals calm down. Step one moves you onto the carrier's leanest product, which is where renewal volatility is lowest.

Where the money goes — and comes back

The Bridge is a level-funded plan. Each monthly invoice divides into three components: the claims allocation (the largest), stop-loss insurance, and administration. The claims portion is deposited into a separate bank account established for your group, claims are paid from that account as they come in — and this is where the Bridge separates itself from everything else on the market:

What happens to unused claim dollars

Fully insured plan	Typical level-funded plan	EBS Bridge™
The carrier keeps 100% of premium. Low claims year? The surplus stays with the insurance company — not you.	The carrier returns up to 50% of unused claim dollars. The other half stays with the carrier.	100% of unused claim dollars belong to the employer. Nothing goes back to a carrier.

The refund isn't instant, and we'd rather you hear that from us than discover it: the Bridge is a 12/24 contract, meaning it covers claims incurred during the 12-month plan year and paid over the following 12 months. That second window — the runout — exists to catch claims that trickle in from providers after year-end. Once the runout closes, 100% of what remains is refunded. Some clients take it as a lump sum, some in increments during runout, and some let it build across years as a renewal cushion.

Real numbers from a real group

Below is the first five months of an actual EBS Bridge client's claims report — a 14-employee Michigan group whose plan year runs November 2025 through October 2026, with enrollment across single, employee-plus-spouse, employee-plus-children, and family tiers.

Actual client claims experience, November 2025 – March 2026

Month	Enrolled	Claims paid	Deposited	Running surplus
November 2025	14	$1,768.13	$2,744.54	+$976.41
December 2025	10	$962.03	$1,827.76	+$1,842.14
January 2026	12	$153.33	$2,286.15	+$3,974.96
February 2026	12	$2,388.12	$2,286.15	+$3,872.99
March 2026	12	$1,008.79	$2,286.15	+$5,150.35
Five-month total	—	$6,280.40	$11,430.75	+$5,150.35

Source: actual EBS Bridge client claims report; identifying details removed. Claims paid are incurred-and-paid for the current plan year. Five months in, this group has paid out $6,280 against $11,430 deposited — a $5,150 surplus building in their account. On a fully insured plan, that money would simply have stayed with the carrier. One group's experience, not a guarantee — but it's what the model looks like when it's working.

What your employees experience

Members carry two ID cards — their primary carrier card and their EBS Bridge card — and most of the time that's the only visible difference. Medical claims are entirely automatic: the provider bills the primary carrier first, the carrier issues its explanation of benefits, the claim flows to EBS, and the Bridge pays its portion directly to the provider. Nothing for the employee to file or follow up on. If a provider's office ever misses the second billing step and a balance bill shows up, one call to our office at (866) 793-2764 and we sort it out with them directly — the employee never has to handle it.

The one rule we train every group on is at the pharmacy: present the primary carrier's card, never the Bridge card — prescriptions must process through the primary plan for the Bridge to reimburse them (federal rules prohibit reimbursing GoodRx, coupon, or cash-pay purchases), and reimbursement runs automatically off the carrier's EOB. We over-communicate that rule on purpose, because following it makes the whole thing effortless and skipping it — even by accident — makes a prescription ineligible.

Is the Bridge right for your group?

Run the math and find out — that's a sincere answer, not a dodge. The largest savings typically show up when a group moves off a rich plan onto a high-deductible design, because that's where step one frees up the most premium; employers who've been carrying generous benefits are routinely the ones most surprised by the numbers. But the gap concept itself isn't limited to one plan design. The Bridge's level-funded model is the surplus-return play: your group's own experience drives the outcome, low-claims years put money back in your account, and heavy-claims years are absorbed by stop-loss — though, like any experience-rated plan, your renewal reflects your year. And where a group's census or current plan points a different direction, we'll say so and find the design that works — because we're brokers, the recommendation follows your numbers, not a product quota. Nobody's plan design disqualifies them from this conversation.