Starbucks Takes Health Benefits to Private Exchanges

Starbucks employees will have more health benefit options to choose from when the coffee giant switches to a private exchange for the upcoming plan year.

“The big impetus behind the change was to give our partners more choice,” Reggie Borges, a spokesman for Starbucks Corp., told Bloomberg BNA Aug. 2.

The exchange, which will impact over 150,000 full-time and part-time employees in the U.S., will offer four to six national carriers and five different levels of medical plans, Borges said. Health benefits are available to any employee working more than 20 hours a week.

Private exchanges are different from the ...