Keeping small business health insurance costs down

It’s great to offer a group health insurance plan to your employees. The knowledge that your employees will be able to sleep safely tonight knowing that they won’t be ruined financially should any health issues rear their ugly head should be compensation enough. However, paying for a group health insurance plan for your employees is also a good business decision. Access to affordable health care products will allow your employees to stay much healthier, reducing the number of sick days (think productivity!) taken by your employees, as well as reducing the number of listless sick employees wandering about the office!

However, with the rising cost of health insurance in today’s market, the dream of providing an affordable group health plan to your employees may be vanishing. Hence, caution should be taken when choosing health insurance for small business to ensure that you’re getting the best deal. One logical solution to a lack of funds would be to reduce the level of coverage you offer your workers. This can be achieved by increasing copays and deductibles, or removing a number of benefits from your plan. However, this will most likely prove unpopular with your employees, as you will be in effect giving them a ‘pay’ cut, and may result in less healthy workers. Another idea is to partner up with another small business (or several small businesses!) to get more people under your group plan’s umbrella. Studies have consistently shown that businesses with more employees receive lower private health insurance premiums – a 2006 survey showed that this reduction averages out to be $43 for individual premiums when an increase of 16 employees occurred. As always, you should shop around when selecting private health insurance, whether you are buying for just yourself, a small business or even a large corporation. Although it might just be a few dollars per employee that you might be saving, all those add up, especially if you have many employees! The small business health insurance market can be brutal, but don’t let this stop your small business from offering affordable private health insurance coverage to your employees.