It’s a familiar problem for businesses of almost any size: to attract and keep the best employees, you need to provide benefits. But benefits can be a headache to manage, and the cost of premiums can take a big chunk out of your bottom line. What’s a business owner to do?
Turns out, your options aren’t as limited as you might think.
Options For Business
Business owners — especially small business owners — have been clamoring for affordable benefits packages for years. Now some of the major health insurance carriers have stepped up to deliver a solution.
Most of the major carriers offer plans for groups with between 2 and 50 people. They’ve made it easy to split the costs of premiums with your employees. And many of them have taken steps to simplify the process from application to administration. After all, you didn’t get into business so you could handle paperwork and worry about claims forms.
Some of the more popular options for group health insurance include:
- Managed care — Among group health insurance plans, managed care is typically the most affordable. Managed care organizations negotiate cost savings with networks of healthcare professionals, keeping premiums down for members. HMO and PPO plans are the two most common kinds of managed care plans.
- Cafeteria plans — Cafeteria plans let you create a benefits package without actually specifying the benefits. Instead, the plan offers a “menu†of benefits that your employees can choose from. The benefits are paid for with pre-tax dollars from your employee’s paychecks, saving them money. And that lowers your payroll taxes, too.
- Health savings accounts — Health savings accounts (HSAs) are a new option. HSAs are tax-advantaged bank accounts that help your employees pay for their healthcare. As an employer, you have the option of helping to fund their accounts. To qualify for an HSA, an employee needs to be enrolled in a high deductible health plan — usually an individual PPO plan.
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