Eventually, the question comes up in almost every small business: should we add health insurance as a benefit for our employees? If you have a small business and you haven’t sat down to work out the right answer to this small business insurance question yet, one day you will.
Actually, the basic decision about whether or not to look into a health insurance benefit is pretty easy to make. A small company with lower income employees does not benefit much from offering a health insurance benefit. That’s because lower income employees can obtain subsidized health insurance under the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, and sometimes referred to as the Marketplace. The subsidy available from the federal government means that these employees will have lower premiums than you can offer them with group insurance.
If a company has higher paid employees, then adding a group insurance plan provides both the company and the employees with benefits.
The Important Ins and Outs of Adding Group Health Insurance
Let’s look at a few of the important aspects of adding a group plan.
- Health insurance makes your company look more attractive to prospective hires.
- It gives you an advantage over companies that don’t offer this benefit and makes you at least equal to other companies that do.
- Your staff will be happier paying lower premiums for your group insurance than they would pay for individual or family coverage.
- Employees who feel they have good benefits are more likely to be retained for a longer time.
- When employees have health coverage, there is no barrier to taking good care of their health with preventative care or treatment for any illnesses. They can end up taking fewer sick days off.
- If your company is planning on growing and plans on adding a health insurance benefit at some point in the future, the right time to add that benefit is now, before the growth occurs. Get your price locked in with the smaller number of employees and then new hires won’t change your premiums. This can be important should a future employee or one of their family members have a medical history that would otherwise result in a higher premium.
Health Insurance Is Valuable to Employees
Survey after survey of employees shows that health insurance is a popular and valuable benefit. It’s not hard to understand why.
- Premiums for group coverage are more stable than premiums for individual coverage. One study showed that while small business premiums only increased five percent over a three-year period, individual premiums increased more than 50 percent in the same time period.
- The average individual deductible was nearly a third lower for those covered by small business plans compared to those with individual health insurance coverage.
- A 2017 survey showed that a third of all those surveyed had turned down a job due to a lack of benefits.
- Nearly a third of Americans would like to receive improvements in their health insurance.
- A 2020 survey of 2,000 people found that 84 percent of them rated health insurance as the most wanted benefit.
Getting Help to Make the Right Choice
Once you’ve made the decision to add group health insurance for your employees, it can be challenging to keep up with the changes to plans and laws every year. For many small companies, that’s where MBhealth comes in. We don’t just help individuals and families find the best health insurance. We help many small businesses find the right group plans for their employees. We can also provide annual reviews of the plans to ensure that staff have the best coverage and the company gets the best price.
We know that for many companies, adding this benefit at the right time is a big step forward in their growth and viability. As insurance brokers in Missouri and Illinois, we love helping small businesses grow while also helping them stay competitive as they keep their employees happy and on the job. If you’re looking at adding group health insurance, give us a call at (314) 544-5400.
