Group health insurance is a insurance coverage that all businesses should have. Not only does it offer you as the business owner specific tax breaks, it also attracts better employees who remain more loyal to your company over time.
Why is Group Health Insurance Important?
Affordable Group health insurance is an important benefit to offer employees, because it can often be the deciding factor of whether your prize employee takes a job with another company or stays working for you. Offering group health insurance to your employees can often sway them to accept lower salaries, because the health benefits are seen as a form of pay that they don’t have to pay income taxes on. Group health insurance allows you to provide health care coverage to multiple people at discounted rates. It is estimated that as much as 60 percent of the United States workforce gets their healthcare coverage through a group policy that is provided by their employer. This is such an important benefit to so many employees that it can be the deciding factor on whether they change jobs, or accept specific job offers. Our insurance agents in California can provide you with additional information.
Affordable Group Health Rates
When many people pitch in to help cover the cost of health insurance, rates go down for all of the parties who are included in the coverage. This phenomenon makes it so that group health coverage provided to your employees is an affordable investment they are able to make for themselves and their families. Of course, rates vary based on coverage and location, but where independent health insurance may cost a person $500 every month, group health insurance provided by their employer may be as little as $200 per month. For many workers, having group health insurance through their employer is the equivalent of receiving a much higher rate of pay for their job because they get access to a benefit at much lower costs than they can obtain on their own.
Employee Retention
Because health insurance is such a coveted job benefit, offering it to your employees can help keep them as valuable and dedicated workers in your company for many years to come. Health insurance benefits attract the brightest and best employees in the industry, and helps retain them for a much longer period. Since they feel you are taking care of them by offering such a valuable benefit, they are likely to be more loyal to you as the business owner and overall more loyal and dedicated to your company.
Employee Benefits
Group health insurance is a medical insurance policy that can be obtained by companies with as few as two employees. Larger small businesses up to fifty employees are also ideal candidates for a group health insurance policy. With this insurance coverage, your employee’s health care costs are covered in full or in part by the company insurance policy. For example, health insurance policies may help cover most of the costs for your employee’s prescription drugs, and it may enable them to visit the doctor for a wellness checkup for a small co-payment fee of five or ten dollars. Many group health policies will even cover pre-existing medical conditions. This is beneficial to your employees because they do not have to pay for the full cost of medical care for health problems they acquired earlier in life. As an employer, this is a big benefit to you because many employees will accept lower wages in exchange for health insurance policies that allow pre-existing conditions. Some group health policies cover the cost of hospital stays, pregnancy and birth, wellness care and care for when the employee becomes sick or has an accident. Some policies may even offer extended coverage for the employee’s immediate family members.
Tax Advantages
Employers who offer group health insurance coverage to their employees benefit in a number of ways. It is easier to attract highly qualified employees to your company and it is easier to keep them for the long term. Many employees see health coverage benefits as an added form of income that they do not have to pay income taxes on. Regulations vary from one state to another, but employers also receive tax breaks when they offer health insurance coverage to their employees. The portion of the insurance premiums that you pay to help maintain affordable health care coverage for your employees can be deducted as a regular business expense. Check with a licensed tax professional for the details but you may find there are other incentives and tax breaks that you can claim by maintaining this coverage for your employees. Every company has unique needs and variations to how they are organized, so setting up group health insurance for your business should be tailored to your specific professional requirements. Small businesses are generally those who have between two and fifty employees on the payroll and the health care coverage benefits available to businesses of that size can vary from those available to larger corporations that have thousands of employees. Consider your current employee base and what health insurance benefits may be the most desirable to them over the long term. For example, if you employ several young mothers, they may be particularly interested in obtaining low cost family health insurance. A business who mainly employs college attending males will have different health care insurance needs than one who employs older men and women who have grown children and grandchildren. Determine what specific health care benefit coverage your employees are likely to want and determine what your business can afford for the health care insurance budget. Sometimes the number of employees that your business has to include in the health care coverage will limit or change the types of services that can be included in the coverage policy. So once you have determined the health care coverage that is important to your workforce, talk to your insurance agent to see if everything is available for the size and type of business you operate.