Employer
Health
Insurance
What you can do to get it
Employer health insurance that is fair an affordable is critical to
organization success. For
every company, not matter how small or large, providing health
insurance is a major cost of doing business.
Unfortunately, some
smaller companies are simply not able to afford the premiums
of, and
cannot provide, health insurance. In fact, about 3 in 5
people
who are uninsured in America are employed by a small
business.
This is a huge impact on small businesses
that are trying to lure talented employees away from larger
companies.
Tips
For Reducing Employer Health Insurance Rates
There are some things that
business owners can do in an effort to reduce those high monthly
premiums.
- The first step is to establish a health and
wellness
program for your employees.
- This can be harder to do for a
small company, but it doesn’t take much to improve the health of
employees.
- Offering to pay for education programs can
help,
as can offering to provide flu shots to any employee who wants
one.
- A gym membership may help some employees stay
healthy
and help to reduce employer health insurance costs.
- Next, you can consider joining a group health
insurance plan.
- If you have more members in your group, the
premium for each individual will be lower.
- If you business
has 15 members, it can partner with another company that has 15
members, and both companies can benefit.
- You can
also consider setting up a tax-sheltered health savings
account.
- These accounts allow you or your employees to
pay
into them without being taxed on that income.
- They can only
be used for health-related reasons such as going to the doctor or
hospital.
- The drawback is that most require a high
deductible.
- Still, they can be a nice compromise for a
small
business, and employees can roll their account over to another employer
when they leave.
- Lastly, the biggest way to save
money on your employer health insurance, may be to simply be to cut
down on your
coverage.
- This is not a popular solution with most
individuals, but it can be a good compromise.
- It is also
reasonable to offer to pay for a certain amount of coverage and have
your employees pay more if they want to up their coverage.
- Excluding some type of coverage can also help
cut the premiums
down.
- It may be a good idea for employers to talk
to their
employees before doing this, and to gauge the things that are most
important to the people as a group.
As a small
business, it can be tough to provide competitive employer health
insurance. Generally speaking, the few employees a business
has, the more it will have to pay per person.
With a larger
company, this cost can be diffracted by the productivity of the group
as a whole. But with only a handful of employees,
this can be asking a lot.
Following these tips may help make
the burden more manageable, and help find common ground in order to
lure those talented employees to the businesses of
tomorrow.
For
more information regarding employer liability
insurance, such as the employer
health insurance section here, please be sure
to check out
the following
areas:
Similar to employer
insurance, employees also have
responsibilities and rights. To learn more about this, check
out the employee
rights section.
And don't forget to check out the various employment
background screening sections, especially if you are
interested in federal
government jobs.
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