Group Health Insurance for business?

Question

I own a small business (roughly 80 employees) and pay over $25,000 per month for health insurance. Is there any way to combine with other companies to get a better rate? or do you have any suggestions at all?

Thanks

Answer 1

You can combine with other companies, but they would  all have to be under the same corporate structure. In other words, you and the other company would have to merge. I'm not sure you would want to do that.

What some company execs. are doing is increasing the deductibles on the group policy, which will save the company a lot of money. But then the company would pay all or part of the deductible for the employees when they have a claim.

The employees will feel that you care, and probably will increase their productivity, and lessen turnover.

This will still save money for the company, and it's tax deductible.

Answer 2

have you done proper research  that  deal you are getting from insurance company is cheapest ?

Answer 3

You could switch to an HSA plan and dedicate $x to each employees account per month.  This becomes a self-selecting process as the healthy people actually begin to accrue qualified money in their account while those with higher health costs pay more out of pocket.  If you have key employees that have health concerns, this may be a bad internal PR move.  On the other hand, if most of your important (or mouthy) employees are healthy, then you are essentially contributing to their retirement while saving health care costs.

Answer 4

Nope, sorry.  Employees don't understand how expensive it is for employers to cover them!

All you can do is shop out the plan - cut coverages, or increase deductibles.  OR, shift more of the cost of the insurance to the employees.

Answer 5

One thing that many companies are starting to do is offer medical reimbursement plans to their employees.

Medical reimbursement plans allow employees to have freedom of choice to choose any individual health insurance plan from any company that they want for much cheaper than a regular group plan and the employer gets to have lower costs and still enjoy the tax deduction for paying for employee's health benefits.

Here is some more information on medical reimbursement plans: