employee health insurance

[pbrennan]

Hey there,

I agree – my personal health insurance is going up 17% next year. I have a couple of comments about this.

First, an idea that might save you a few bucks. If your business is under 50 employees, this might be worth looking into:

Most health insurance rates are “group” insurance, and as I understand, the rates are based on actual claims data for that group. So it goes to say that groups with older populations probably have higher rates. I used to work in corporate America, for a company that had a lot of 50+ employees. As a 20-something back then, my rates were an astounding $550/mo for just me – and that was the group rate through the company of 5,000+ employees! After leaving that company, I got quotes for myself independently of any company policy, and because I was young & healthy, my rates were only $200/mo.

So the idea would be: Have your employees search for their own individual policy & see if it’s cheaper than yours at comparable coverage. Use an insurance company to help you administer the quote-gathering process. If it is, offer to cover whatever % of it you’d cover for other employees, and you’ll save the difference!

NOTE: I’m not sure if this counts as offering health insurance under the “obamacare” laws. You’ll have to check with your attorney or HR / insurance provider.

Second, do you offer more coverage for healthier employees? Does your plan administration offer discounts to non-smokers, people who aren’t overweight, etc? This would qualify them at different rate tiers, possibly saving you & the company money.

Also, If you do offer benefits, that is a big selling point in the industry. The more benefits (not just health insurance) you offer, the better employees you can attract. Perhaps you aught to think about increasing your standards among employees you hire or already have, as a condition to your increasing costs of benefits? 

Or lastly, and not least, insurance costs are always on the rise. If you have to raise prices, you have to raise prices. Your competition who doesn’t won’t be able to offer benefits to their employees, or they will eventually go out of business. Both are great scenarios for you! Ultimately that is what will happen with all businesses – and the consumers will end up having to pay for the increasing costs.

[andrewtpoe]

I have a thought, and I have no idea how practical/reasonable this is. My family uses an HSA purchased on an individual plan. We determined it provided a better quality of insurance at a lower rate. We also liked it because once we hit the high deductible the insurance company pays 100% instead of the typically 80/20 split. Not everyone likes having the high deductible, which I get, but I find it totally worth it. Our insurance premium is fully half of what an 80/20 PPO would run.

Might be worth running this option by your employees, and it may still be cheaper to go this route and your company help with the deductibles. I run my own business now, and although we are not ready to hire employees yet this is the route I will be most interested in taking when I get there.

My families insurance is going up about 20% next year as well. Just got the notice yesterday…

[ZDehra Al Quraishi]

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