If your company employs at least two, but no more than fifty people, small business health insurance can benefit both you and your employees alike. Besides providing medical care for yourself and your employees, a small business health insurance plan helps spread the financial risk between all the members. Moreover, employer 100% tax deductible, employees save on payroll taxes. So it can boost job satisfaction within your company.
A small business health insurance plan provides its members with a set coverage with rates calculated using the group and individuals. Employees may be able to add policy riders and additional coverage to fit their specific needs, but the basic policy format will remain the same.
Likewise, although small business health insurance comes in a variety of shapes and sizes (fee-for-service, HMO, PPO, POS), the format that's chosen will apply to all members. (And although it is technically possible to purchase a group indemnity policy, the managed care plans are much more common.)
Although rate calculations vary both from state to state and from company to company, the cost of a group health insurance plan is based on the characteristics of each member, including:
- age
- health status
- occupational hazard
- business and/or residential location
Employees of a business that offers group health insurance are not compelled to join the plan, but the group must maintain a minimum number of insured (as few as 2 people, depending on the policy) to guarantee coverage.
Well, group health insurance is less expensive than a bunch of individual policies bound together, but it's not cheap. No health care in America is. Depending (again) on the state and the insurer, you, as the employer, will be required to pay some percentage of an employee's individual premium (often 25% or 50%). If the employee wants to extend coverage to a spouse or dependant, you may choose to pay a percentage of that cost, but that's not required. You'll probably have a lot of policy and payment options to choose from.
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