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Providing employees health ins.

wheelieking71

Diamond
Joined
Jan 2, 2013
Location
Gilbert, AZ
Man, I am really having a hard time getting people even in the door. Let alone sticking around.
I need to do something. I guess this is the next step. But, I have no clue where to start. I am no good at admin anyways.
I'm ultimately going to off-load this to the wife. But, it would be in my best interest if I could give her some direction.
She is very in-experienced as well. But, if I show her a path, she'll run with it.
Does anybody have any advice on where to even start? Good experiences? Bad experiences? Companies to stay away from?
 
Wouldn't it be better to wait and see what happens with the ACA? It would not make sense for you to pay someone's health insurance if they could get it a lot cheaper on their own if they qualified for subsidies. Why not either offer a higher hourly rate or some kind of bonus system? It was easy for me when I was an OEM and had employees. On a good week I handed out some extra cash.
 
In the past I interviewed at one company that provides a "credit" for insurance that goes up over time.

Self buy insurance and company pays the credit part.

As employee improves the credit goes up.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G930A using Tapatalk
 
We are a small business of less than 50 people (their definition of small 1-50). My coverage is pretty crappy with deductibles and co-pays, but I *only* pay about $70/week, but just for me, wife has hers thru work. I remember when health, dental, vision, AND life insurance was $25/week, for my wife and kids! :(
 
We are a small business of less than 50 people (their definition of small 1-50). My coverage is pretty crappy with deductibles and co-pays, but I *only* pay about $70/week, but just for me, wife has hers thru work. I remember when health, dental, vision, AND life insurance was $25/week, for my wife and kids! :(

In a land far away in another time I worked for a large company where employee and spouse got 100% HMO coverage free of charge. Family coverage, no limit on number of children was $5 a week. When they raised family coverage to $10 a week people flipped out, back then when on sale you could get 3 twelve packs of Meister-Brau for $10.
As one who was contemplating self employment at the time, I had always kept abreast of health insurance costs.
It was a couple years before rates went to insane levels, the cost of 100% HMO coverage ran about $125 for single, $225 for a couple and $400 a family a month if you paid your own, with both spouses in the 19-44 age group and people were complaining about $10 a week. That was a time your average Joe factory worker was unaware of the cost of coverage as most places had decent employee health benefits.
 
Most regions only have a few insurance providers. Just give them a call.

FWIW, I had a personal policy, and switched over to a business policy that covers my family and one employee through Regence BCBS. It was only another $300/month to add the employee, and now I get to write the whole thing off.

Now we have two employees covered. It's not that expensive, but I feel like the piece-of-mind is an absolute requirement. They do not have the option to waive coverage.

Nobody who works full time should be without insurance coverage. I think it's BS that we have to foot the bill as employers, but that's just how it is here.
 
Insurance is a very complicated business, but absolutely necessary if you want to keep good people. I sold out to my partner 20 years ago. Even then it was much too complex and important for us to try to shop all the options. For many employees the benefits were as important as the pay, even more so for older, more experienced and generally more stable employees. It was so important to us that we paid 100% for employee, spouse and family. At that time we were paying $800/mo for our most senior machinist. We had a very stable crew (many are still there) and no trouble finding good help when we needed it. Find an agent who specializes in group health insurance. Don't try to figure it out yourself, you've got a business to run
 
...It was so important to us that we paid 100% for employee, spouse and family. At that time we were paying $800/mo for our most senior machinist. We had a very stable crew (many are still there) and no trouble finding good help when we needed it. Find an agent who specializes in group health insurance. Don't try to figure it out yourself, you've got a business to run

Twenty years ago group health insurance was a different animal. We are grandfathered in with our $1000 deductible BCBS, that's no longer offered around here, and it seems to be much appreciated by the employees. When we looked at a cheaper quote (like we do every year) you only start saving cost at such a large deductible it's not worth having the coverage. The average employee wouldn't use up $3K in a year. Insurance is an awful racket, but when somebody absolutely has to have a $30K operation and they get told at the hospital, Wow, you have really good insurance, well, they tend to remember that.
 
It makes me wonder with the amount of people on this site.

Why hasn't this group purchased some sort of group plan?

There are alternatives Medi-Share for example.

I have never participated, so I wouldn't know anything about it, but they had a few commercials running other day.
 
It makes me wonder with the amount of people on this site.

Why hasn't this group purchased some sort of group plan?

Gee, if only we could get an even bigger group together. A huge group. Like, every single citizen could be covered under a plan that we all pay into.

Nope, wait. Nope. I can't see how that would benefit small businesses.
 
Or open the markets up to more competition.

The health insurance "crisis" was created when the politicians passed laws allowing us to "better manage our health" back when Nixon was in office.

A video put an interesting correlation together. The recordings from the white house has the old bastard saying health care for profit and the speech he gave the next day peddling the BS.

All it did was drive up prices.....and screw the little guy......
 
Twenty years ago group health insurance was a different animal. We are grandfathered in with our $1000 deductible BCBS, that's no longer offered around here, and it seems to be much appreciated by the employees. When we looked at a cheaper quote (like we do every year) you only start saving cost at such a large deductible it's not worth having the coverage. The average employee wouldn't use up $3K in a year. Insurance is an awful racket, but when somebody absolutely has to have a $30K operation and they get told at the hospital, Wow, you have really good insurance, well, they tend to remember that.

20 years ago I got a $55,000 operation covered 100%, not even a co-pay when I checked into the hospital and I was in there 5 days, never saw a bill. If that kind of insurance existed now it would be $2500 a month for one person.
 
20 years ago I got a $55,000 operation covered 100%, not even a co-pay when I checked into the hospital and I was in there 5 days, never saw a bill. If that kind of insurance existed now it would be $2500 a month for one person.

Yea, Allison took a nasty fall playing with her nephews on a concrete splash-pad about 1.5years ago. Hit her head really hard.
Complete memory loss for about 30 minutes. Sever vertigo. Pupils going nuts. Slurring really badly. It was an extreme emergency situation. Family rushed her to the nearest hospital.
She was there two days. Memory slowly came back. Nobody ever asked any insurance questions. They just did what needed done. The docs/staff were fantastic. She recovered just fine.
I cant say say the same for the insurance company. They are trying to bill her $20k because the hospital she ended up in was "out of network".
The hospital bills all got paid. This is just recent they started going after her. She pretty much told them "Eff you and your network! I had no clue where I was at!".
 
Bill,

My wife went through the small business association and had an insurance broker come out to the shop. He sat down with us and provided us with several options with different providers and had their tiers of coverage laid out in simple to understand terms, and costs.

I pay 100% of the cost of employee health insurance. They are responsible for co-pays and deductible.

The broker has worked out GREAT! Anytime we have questions, an answer is only an email or phone call away.

Later,
Russ
 
Yea, Allison took a nasty fall playing with her nephews on a concrete splash-pad about 1.5years ago. Hit her head really hard.
Complete memory loss for about 30 minutes. Sever vertigo. Pupils going nuts. Slurring really badly. It was an extreme emergency situation. Family rushed her to the nearest hospital.
She was there two days. Memory slowly came back. Nobody ever asked any insurance questions. They just did what needed done. The docs/staff were fantastic. She recovered just fine.
I cant say say the same for the insurance company. They are trying to bill her $20k because the hospital she ended up in was "out of network".
The hospital bills all got paid. This is just recent they started going after her. She pretty much told them "Eff you and your network! I had no clue where I was at!".

Glad she ended up ok, I thought with all medical insurance in an emergency you can go out of network. Please don't tell me they did not consider that an emergency. She obviously had very dangerous brain swelling.
 








 
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