Small business owners are often vulnerable to rising costs of health insurance, which increase by more than 10% each year. It may be quite a challenge. Here are some options to help you lower the costs so that health insurance will be affordable not only for yourself, but for your employees as well. Especially as the health-care reform hasn’t helped though it was supposed to reduce the expense of small businesses.
Shop Around
Small business owners often have a false opinion that having taken out health insurance they cannot change anything during a certain period of time. The fact is that you can change your insurance plans practically at any time. Consumer specialists recommend doing so every six months or even more often.
High Deductible Plans
These plans put more responsibility on employees to manage their costs and expenses. The idea here is to motivate the employees to take care of their health. Small businesses are more and more inclined to turn to this option as a way of saving costs.
One more way to reduce the overall costs is to bundle medical, dental and vision care together with one company, but not multiple carriers.
Offer your employees HSAs ‒ health savings accounts. These personal savings accounts are to be used only for qualified health-care costs. HSAs usually have lower premiums.
Consider HMO Plans
HMO or health maintenance organization plans are plans which assume that prices can be negotiated. It is quite natural that they can cost far less than other health insurance plans. Some HMOs are especially strong and offer considerably lower premiums.
Arrange the Amount of Employee Contributions in Tiers
In order to economize on health care, owners of small businesses can tie the amount of each employee’s contribution into health insurance to their salary. The idea is that the higher paid employees are to pay more. The result is that the overall costs become cheaper.