A business with higher paid employees can benefit greatly from adding health insurance benefits. By survey, health insurance is the benefit most desired by more than eight out of ten employees. And nearly a third of those questioned in another survey said they had turned down a job because of poor benefits.
Employees with good benefits tend to be happier and stay on their jobs longer. They also have easier access to preventive health care and treatment for any illnesses or chronic conditions. This can lead to fewer days off or avoidance of medical leaves.
Small businesses with lower paid employees probably can’t offer better coverage or lower premiums than those employees could get by enrolling under the Affordable Care Act (also known as Obamacare). But for higher income employees, it’s a good thing for small companies to implement this benefit as soon as they can.
A Few Facts about Small Business Health Insurance
At MBhealth, we’ve been helping individuals and companies obtain health insurance for years. We know just how tricky this whole business is because there are so many laws related to the subject. Getting good coverage can be a lot like filing your taxes—there are so many laws! It’s hard to know which ones affect you unless you have plenty of experience in this field.
Let’s look at a few of the points that make adding health insurance benefits to a small business challenging.
- A small business normally has to assign their HR person to research all the available plans and choose one. Then they have to collect up all the information needed to enroll the company in this plan, and handle any questions and problems. In most small businesses, the person doing this work is the owner because there is no dedicated HR person.
- Whether it’s the owner, an office manager, or an HR person doing the work, it takes many hours to become expert enough to make the right choices. That’s time taken away from running the business or actually tending to the personnel.
- Many small business owners overbuy or underbuy: They buy too much coverage, or they buy too little. Either the premiums are too high when there’s too much coverage so the employees can’t afford it, or the employees don’t feel the benefit is any good. Only experience and knowledge of the plans and laws makes it simple to get the best plan the first time around.
- Once an initial decision is made, annual reviews and revisions are needed to keep up with changes in plans, personnel, and so on.
- When a small business has a billing problem or issue with their provider network, the HR staff has to call the insurance company directly to get questions answered and sort out the problems.
- Each state has its own requirements for small businesses and these laws must be known and complied with.
It’s no wonder that many small business owners put off this decision as long as they can!
Helping Small Businesses in Missouri and Illinois
MBhealth makes adding this benefit to small businesses simple and fast because we’ve already acquired this experience. We have helped hundreds make their small business insurance decisions so they can get on with the business of being profitable! We help them get started with new plans, change plans, assist by answering questions throughout the year, and perform annual reviews when those are wanted.
Most of the time, we recommend the Multiple Employer Welfare Arrangement for businesses with between two and fifty employees. If you’re looking to add a health insurance benefit for your employees, give us a call at (314) 544-5400, tell us about your company and let’s look at your options.
