Health Insurance for Your Small Business

While we cannot say that one health insurance plan will be the best plan for all small businesses, we can offer some good advice for getting the best overall medical coverage package for your company and employees.

1) Don’t just pick one insurance plan.

Many insurance agents will have you select just one plan for your employees.  This makes their job easier because they just have to explain one plan to all employees. Offering one plan, however, does not give your staff a lot of options to choose from. The truth is, most insurance companies will allow you to offer all of their plans to your employees including both HMOs and PPOs.  With a menu of health care options to choose from, your employees can tailor their benefits to meet their needs.  And offering multiple plans by the same insurance carrier will not necessarily cost your company more!  Plus, it can make your employees happier, which can ultimately benefit the company.

2) Offer compensation for a baseline plan.

While your company may offer 20 different health plans for your employees to chose from, you can select just one plan for which your company will pay 100%.  This “baseline plan” should cover catastrophic health care, offer some preventative coverage, and offer a somewhat reasonable deductible. Most of your employees will chose this plan and will be satisfied with the coverage. If you have a few employees who want enhanced benefits, they can select a plan that will cover more but they will have to pay the difference. That way your company will not be footing the bill for a high-end plan that many people do not truly value.

3) Suggest HSAs

Some of your more savvy employees may select an HSA that actually costs lest than the baseline plan mentioned above. You should encourage this and offer to put the difference between the more expensive baseline plan and the less expensive HSA high deductible plan into a health savings account for them.  They will cost you the same amount as all the other baseline plan employees but they will be growing a health saving account that they will really value. See our HSA section for more information.

The goal of our advice above is to allow all your employees to be happy, while also allowing you to stay within your budget.  The key to coming up with an insurance package that’s well tailored to your company is selecting the correct insurance company to partner with.  Working with a Medicoverage agent will allow you to compare companies, get the details you need, and chose the provider that’s the right match for your company.  Visit our Contact page to get in touch with us.