In the benefitbay® ICHRA modeling experience, there are several different references to silver plans. Let's break those down quickly so we can all be on the same page!

LSP - Lowest Silver Plan and LCSP (lowest cost silver plan)

Ok so really, this is the LCSP as defined by the ACA and you can read more about that from the regulations noted here on the healthcare.gov link. The LSP is specific to an OnExchange policy.

The LSP is the basis for ensuring that a compliant affordability calculation is provided within benefitbay®. Our system will use the LSP premium as well as the income information provided to calculate the minimum ICHRA (employer) contribution threshold for each employee. This LSP premium is based on the employee's zip code listed on the census and represents the OnExchange Lowest Silver Cost Plan.

We believe you have more important things to do than to run individual quotes OnExchange for every member of the census, so benefitbay® does that for you in the background after loading a census. You can view this LSP premium when you are inside any model on the benefitbay® system. (Reminder: This is the LSP premium for the employee only based on the age and zip code provided on the census)

Ok, so that doesn't seem so difficult and I am glad benefitbay® is doing all that work for me - why a whole help center article for this?

There are a few other places in the product where you'll see the lowest silver premiums so let's review those and keep things simple and clear.

Once you've worked on a Model, set up contribution structures, and confirmed the affordability for each employee in this group, you can then navigate to our industry-leading FULCRUM tool. This is where the magic really starts to shine. We cover more of that in this article.

When you are on the FULCRUM you'll see a Benchmark Plan drop-down. The default option here is ICHRA LSP.

This is the same OnExchange LSP plan used for affordability calculation on the modeling page, but this premium will include additional costs for dependents if they have been added to your group census.

You can also select Silver Low as a benchmark plan.

This will default to an OffExchange low silver plan whenever possible. Where LSP is specific to OnExchange, the low silver benchmark is focused on accessing an OffExchange option to help compare more closely to a potential group plan that might be currently in place.

Quick recap: