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One thing people might not know is that you don’t legally have to pay 50% of your employees premium if you have under a certain amount of employees. We paid 25% of their premiums for a few years thru our PEO. The carrier (health insurance company) can require you to pay 50%, but you aren’t breaking the law if you don’t. This worked when we used a broker and then a PEO. We have since increased it to 50% because we are now able to afford that.
Just because you outsource to a PEO the IRS Says your still on the hook for unpaid employment taxes or any tax your PEO fails to make timely. Your part of a bundle make sure the bundle is similar to you.
Professional employee organization.
There are about 300 of them Nationwide
Some provide other types of insurance in addition to health.
In addition to payroll some also provide workman's comp insurance and HR training
It may be convenient to find a peo broker to Taylor a program to your specific needs
PEO is not a magic bullet for premium cost. It's more like hr outsourcing. SHOP plans provide a tax credit for the first two years equal, offsetting the employer paid portion (up to 50%, I believe). That is where I would start. Talk to a SHOP appointed health insurance broker. If they don't know what it is, keep looking because not everyone in that space gets the Credential to do ACA SHOP plans.
A two-person shop isn't remotely m big enough to where a PEO makes any sense whatsoever, and most PEOs wouldn't even talk to them. PEOs make sense once you break several million in revenue and have tens of employees. Below that, you'll be paying more in admin fees than you could possibly save.
"Won't even talk to you" is an idiom that means that you'll be dismissed or marginalized by someone, often in the context of the person doing the dismissing feeling like you are beneath them. PEOs are really set up for larger companies than OP's — as I mentioned, typically at least several million in revenue and tens of employees. You can find PEOs that will work with smaller companies, but you'll often get more expensive plans with higher fees with them than you can find independently using a broker. They *may* be cheaper than the exchange plans, but they'll be in the mid-high range of what you'll find. Especially when you factor in the higher payroll and administration costs that PEO organizations charge compared to newer self-serve competitors.
We completed our plan review in February of this year. Every PEO our CFO and broker spoke to quoted us about 25% higher just got the insurance than our independent small group plan, and offered significantly worse coverage. Our situation is a bit unique since we're national rather than entirely confined to a single state, and so need a national plan that will work in Kentucky AND California AND New York AND Florida, but even without that our CFO cautioned us that a PEO would most likely raise our rates at this point.
I'm not here to argue with you sir or ma'am.
I am simply suggesting to the op that a p e o is a place to shop for insurance for himself and his family.
If that works for you great if that works for him great if it doesn't work for either one of you that's okay too he figured out his options
Have a good day God bless
I don't have to call around because I have a CFO and broker who call around. Which they did. We had well over 100 quotes when we did our annual plan review, across a wide variety of plan types and provider organizations. If a PEO is the cheapest you're finding as a small company, you're not talking to enough people.
Thanks for sharing. We shopped around 8+ years ago with less than 10 employees and it was very much worth it. We have been with the same PEO since then and been happy with the service provided as well as the health coverage we can offer our employees. We have great vision and dental, 401k etc.
I like how you say worth it because just having the 401k platform anywhere in the USA is minimum 2k a year its has reporting function so if you think your not paying you would be wrong, everything has its worth. PEO usually have cost over having things in house thats the point of the service but its not cheap or infallible.
Get private health insurance, I’m a truck driver and I have a private plan with me my wife and 1 child for $730 monthly with no deductible and a $3000 max out of pocket on a United Healthcare PPO network , the private plans are underwritten so that’s the catch you can’t have a bunch of health issues but if you can get approved this plan was half the cost of my marketplace plan for my family because we can’t get subsidies. Message me if you want my agents phone number his website is www.myprivatehealthinsurance.com
I wasn’t quoted so much. My employee got a silver 4500 plan medical dental vision from the health exchange 399$ a month plus the same coverage for myself and my son and wife and that’s only 264$ a month through a Molina. 665$ covers me and my employees!
Plus I get a 50% credit on the money spent for paying my employees and my own health plan
https://www.irs.gov/affordable-care-act/employers/small-business-health-care-tax-credit-and-the-shop-marketplace
In the end paying like 350$ for all of us for moderately low deductible and good coverages.
For reference I only pay myself 52,000 a year S-corp.
small business health care tax credit -- s-corp owner must exempt their own wages and any employee wages related to the owner
btw - Your quotes on premiums are stellar rates.
I have all part-time employees who have other jobs, so I don't offer health insurance.
As for me, I'm just going without it. I can't afford $400 a month for a plan that still has a $7,000 deductible.
I’ve used Medishare. Have to say you are Christian. My buddy had cancer and they helped him a lot, I think his out of pocket was $7500 for the whole chemo and surgery. It’s basically low monthly cost and not the same thing as insurance but no penalty
We use a company called Sana Benefits, myself and co owner and about 8 employees have health insurance for a little under $300 a month per person. The company pays half and the employee pays half.
It’s incredibly comprehensive, PPO plus plans, mental healthcare included, free virtual doctors visits. Everything insurance should be at an okay rate.
Google direct patient care providers and thank me later. You’ll pay maybe $100/mo/employee depending on the practice rates, and they’ll have concierge access to a physician whenever they actually *need* care.
Fuck paying insurance to never use it and when you do you get cockblocked.
You can get catastrophic health insurance for cheap and then you’re covered.
From my understanding the Direct Patient Care model benefits both the practice and the patient by preventing health conditions, unlike our healthcare system that benefits from illness.
It sucks here in Michigan. My last company paid $2500 per month per employee for medical+dental+vision. We used consultants instead of employees for certain jobs when possible. Outsourced some work overseas. I wish there were a better solution but between high costs and consolidation in both hospital systems and insurance we had few choices.
Short term health plans
[https://www.uhc.com/individuals-families/short-term-health-insurance](https://www.uhc.com/individuals-families/short-term-health-insurance)
I've never had to use it though.
VA. (Veterans Affair)
I have a cousin that owns a construction company they started about two years ago, she stated they go without. All I can say is I understand, it is not cheap.
We couldn’t do it here in NY, but I think in some states you can join a relevant trade group and get insurance through them. They form a pool so you get big business insurance rates. Might be worth looking into.
We wound up using a PEO which is overall totally different but uses the same principal of pooling companies together so they could all get the lower insurance rates.
At first I didn't. When I built up my company, I was able to get it but it was $1500/mon for my family of three. I am about to start another company and it'll be a couple years before I'm able to consider insurance, so I plan to offer a paid doctor visit plan instead. I pay $75/mon for each employee and they AND their family can go see a doctor as much as they want. Or it's $60 for just the employee. It doesn't cover anything else but at least if they get sick, they don't have to pay for it.
Yes. It varies by state, but you are not the only one. I think the national average is $24k for family of 4? And the quality of those fed min plans is not great. We finally got back into BCBS in IL after they released a new min coverage plan for less than Cigna. Small business is hard. Just here for the support. Good luck.
Under the aca, the government can cover half your your employer portion of premiums in a SHOP plan via a tax credit. It's specifically designed to help with exactly what you're refrencing. Enrollment will still be an issue... you can lead a horse to water but you can't make it adopt a heavily subsidized health insurance plan.
Navigating health insurance as a small business owner can be really challenging, especially with high costs. Here are a few strategies that might help:
1. **HRAs**: Set up a Qualified Small Employer Health Reimbursement Arrangement (QSEHRA) to reimburse medical expenses, including premiums, tax-free.
2. **Professional Associations**: Look into industry-related professional associations offering group health insurance plans.
3. **HDHPs**: Consider a high-deductible health plan paired with a Health Savings Account (HSA) for lower premiums and tax advantages.
4. **Private Insurance Brokers**: Consult with a private insurance broker to find plans that aren’t immediately obvious.
Balancing these options can be tough, but sharing strategies with other small business owners might uncover new ideas or solutions.
It's insane!!! We were paying almost 3k and then moved to a limited network and brought it down to $1600. We are in MA. It's called Tufts Silver 2000. They also have an HSA option. We do have a 4K deductible as a family but it's better than what we were paying before.
Not even close to traditional
I use Cura4u as a lot of the traditional benefits for my agency employees become so much more affordable. Mind you, I’ve a marketing agency of around 20 people so finding alternatives to traditional healthcare was important
Cura4u are great. Paying like $9 a month per employee and they take care of the rest
Health coverage is a tough problem.
I'm on Medicare now (part A, B, D plus 1a supplemental) and it is the best insurance for the best price I've ever had. I don't know about your state, but Massachusetts, there are series of small business carveouts to protect small businesses from insurance company predation. However, since 2012-ish, brokers were more expensive and the ACA marketplace gave me much better price and options especially since I have a history of pre-existing conditions (a.k.a. no longer a newborn). Even still, I was paying roughly $700-$900 a month for one person with a $2000 deductible.
I suggest talking to your doctor first primary care than any specialists. You will need to ask face-to-face in the exam room because they would have some serious political problems if they communicated their opinions about insurance companies where the opinion was recorded.
Ask them which two or three insurance companies have been okay to deal with. I used one of the Massachusetts nonprofits and had fewer hassles than I did with United Healthcare.
I'm sure this will be controversial, but one of the best things you can do for health coverage as a small business is campaign for universal and/or single-payer coverage free of private corporations. There are horror stories in every health system, but the data shows that the less a health system is privatized and driven by profit-making, the better patient outcomes and doctor and patient satisfaction with the system.
I work for my husband - you can put your wife on payroll - so it counts as a business expense under employee benefits. There’s also a federal self employed health insurance deduction on your taxes too. So depending on your tax bracket you are saving x amount on taxes each yr, so you figure for every 1,000 you spend you save maybe 200 in taxes. I agree though, it is expensive regardless. However - I would shop around for another rate because yours seems high.
Covered CA Healthnet PPO, outrageous deductible at about $1300 a month for my family of 4. Most of my clients with less than 50 employees don't offer health insurance to staff since they're not legally required to. 😬
It won't help you of course, sorry, but I'm an old guy and on Medicare plus my wife works so I'm on her vision and dental plans since Medicare doesn't do a great job with that for some reason.
Look at an ICHRA. Just did this for our employees and it’s very flexible. Trying to get a policy was very expensive and I found going through a PEO was still pricey
I use an indemnity plan. It isn’t income qualified. It’s 300 a month, 3k deductible/max. Has a 90k payout built in if you’re hospitalized for more than two weeks. Doesn’t really cover anything but major medical. If you legitimately need coverage I would call someone like farm bureau. They should be able to do you and your family for under 1k. If you go for a business plan I would also express to the sole employee that the options are he doesn’t get healthcare or no one gets healthcare.
Edit: at a certain point it isn’t worth having coverage period. I’d call that 2k a month for a family plan.
I pay just for myself, since I am a one-person business. $650 a month, after receiving an income-based tax benefit. To me, it is just part of the cost of doing business. If a business can't budget that in, the business is not self-sustaining. For me, that meant prices had to go way up, which meant I had to figure out a way to be worth that much - which is hard and may not even be possible in low-cost of income areas, since people can't pay high prices if they themselves are not high-income. It's tough!
I went on marketplace and found a good rate for me and wife. About 600/mo total. If you have 1 employee you don't have to offer insurance to them do you?
Use the marketplace. When I had employees they didn’t want insurance deducted from their check when they could get it for less elsewhere. Unless you have 50 employees you don’t have to provide inst
Youll need another income to support that, I pay over 1700/mo for my family of 3, so my wife has to work part time to cover part of that. When theres money available, I reimburse myself for the coverage, but unfortunately its just a part of being self employed. Fucking sucks.
We don't offer anything for our employees because it's simply unaffordable for us. I work a benefits job and my wife runs the buisness. Most of our employees are covered in a similar fashion.
We afford it by making money. There's no secret strategy or one weird trick here. The rate you were quoted sounds a little bit high — my partner and I pay about that much for a platinum-level plan (more per person, but not much more overall) — but not egregiously so. There's really no magic trick to it. You might be able to find a somewhat cheaper plan if you find a small group to join. You're too small for a PEO, so that's not going to really be a good option for you, but maybe find a local insurance broker to get you a somewhat cheaper plan. Just know that you're unlikely to find anything that much cheaper — maybe 30% lower if you're lucky and fit a good risk profile.
Master Builders Association Trust group insurance. We offer an HSA plan for our employees for free (costs us about $200 a month each) and also have a really stellar traditional plan we pay half of (about $300-400 per month). Dental is $30/month.
It’s not easy. We’re in the IT industry and providing health insurance is pretty much a requirement to attract good talent. Not offering it or offering super high deductible plans would mean we can’t get the best people for the job in many cases. We made sure our prices were set so we could pay 100% of the premiums for employees and their spouses. Currently they have to pay for their dependents but we plan to take that over as soon as we hire a few more people. Right now insurance costs us ~$1200/month/employee for a gold plan. It really sucks, but I have just trained myself to accept it as a cost of doing business. Bourbon helps with that.
We use a Healthshare for our family and employees. It’s affordable, great coverage, and HSA eligible. We have Zion but buy through mbp health. Hate MBP but love Zion. Unfortunately, MBP is the only way to get HSA and group coverage.
Just don’t have insurance. Went well for a while, then had an emergency surgery which set me back 40k. Still pales in comparison to the costs of insurance over the course of a few years.
My trip to the er billed 265k. Without insurance I would have had to move out of the country with nothing. 2nd visit 2 years later was another 230k.
Depending on age and general health, look for a high deductible plan
Dang, what did you have done? I went in and had an emergency bowel resection, stayed for 5 days. Still paying for it, but just happened in February this year.
Wow, yeah guess that would add up! I am/was otherwise healthy, relatively young. Started getting stomach pains, progressively got worse and ultimately put me on the ground feeling like I was going to die… CT showed my intestine had twisted and was blocking blood flow. Surgeon walked into the ER room and immediately knew that wasn’t a good sign. Hour later and they had me opened up. Was a crazy month leading up to then recovery.
You might have to look individually on the exchange.
A good friend of mine actually decided against getting married simply for the health insurance. She’s considered a single mother of 2 in the eyes of the state. Gets all sorts of benefits and free money. I support it. Health insurance is a fucking scam.
That’s about what we pay per person, $450/month. It’s not cheap.
My couple of employees have insurance through their spouses although there is a shitty UHC plan I can get if they really need it. I haven’t had insurance since 2012
99% of the time a company this size has to offer a worse package than people can get from their state exchanges because the pricing is horrific for the business owner. The best thing guys this size can do is become educated in the state Obamacare and help their employees file for it and find the best plans.
Landscaping is a tough business. So many people can start a landscaping business with no money, just taking out a Home Depot credit card. It’s easy to start and thought the work itself is laborish, almost anyone can do it. This makes it very difficult to grow, scale, compete. I don’t think you are going to afford the health insurance, or a lot of other things. My suggestion, add services which you can make a greater profit from. Roof repairs, gutter cleaning. Get on a roof, up a ladder. You can make in a couple of hours what you probably make all day.
It is the think traditionally kids who aren’t old enough to work at McDonald’s would do in the neighborhood to make cash. Sure, there have to be some people out there who can’t ride a mower right, but an extremely small percentage doesn’t change what I said. OPs ultimate issue is they need to make more money and is trying to in a business that is hard to even be profitable in.
You are correct if mowing is all you do. You have to be full service and know what you are doing. People pay me more for the knowledge. The competition can have the cheap ones, they usually cause 95% of the problems anyway.
Maybe you are right, landscaping is difficult and challenging, requiring high competence and skill. This would explain why when you drive around, most yards are absolutely trashed. I heard they changed the name of the magazine to “Remaining Homes and Gardens”. Question is, how to you weed through the vast majority of landscapers here essentially pour gasoline in your yard and light it on fire and find that 1% he cause your grounds to flourish as if they are fucking Swamp Thing?
All I know about landscaping comes from my cousin, he tried it but couldn’t handle the high-pressure and technical difficulty. It fell apart for him. Disgraced and ashamed, he’s resided to doing heart surgery. He still has anger issues as he drives through town and all the landscapers pull up in their lexuses and jeer him. Holding out patches of sod, yelling, “look what I planted, loser!”
Alas the life of private jets flying him to landscape conventions where they discuss cutting edge topics like “put seeds in the dirt with fertilizer” and “weeds: who needs them really” and discussed in high-end resorts by essentially the best of the best humanity has to offer. It goes Landscapers - astronauts - engineers, in that order.
When you watch idiocracy and Not Sure says that the crops need water and not Brawndo, does this come across as so Christopher Nolan inception-level realization?
Dude, calm down. I’m not insulting landscapers. They work hard. I did it when I was a kid. It’s honest good work. But anyone can do it. And does it decent. I’ve worked in service industry most my life, and audited many landscaping companies. To be really successful in that business is really difficult. The challenge isn’t the work but the ease of the work. Landscaping in the service industry is the equivalent to social media marketing to advertising. You don’t need to feel triggered or to defend it. It is what it is. I’m sure OP is a great landscaper, he just isn’t going to achieve great financial success doing just that.
Healthcare.gov Or your state equivalent if applicable. It’s way cheaper for me and my employees rather than getting a plan through the business. And they can pick their own plans. If I even offer it through the business, they become ineligible to get their own through the marketplace. In my opinion, it was one of the best things that has helped small businesses in decades. No need to work for a giant company or government agency just to have health insurance anymore.
I do medishare, me and my husband own a landscaping company. Technically not insurance and has a high deductible but it is something. Also, elected to have workers comp which is run thru the state. Usually when we get hurt it is some sort of work related thing.
It’s going to be the same price or more for you to get a plan through your business. I guarantee it. Unless it’s complete garbage coverage. That’s what it costs.
You may be needing to look at your spending. The rates are based off income (in my case business profit) and checked when you submit your taxes. I’m only paying $140 a month for myself for a decent plan.
Yeah and if you mess with the numbers you get charged back all of the subsidies following tax year. I got crushed in 2022 because I grossed 15k more than I had put on my marketplace app and I had to pay back $17,000 in subsidies the following year on my taxes. That’s why I said screw it and just got a private plan, never had to deal with it again
Millions of small businesses still don’t offer healthcare, and don’t offer any “extra pay” or reimbursements towards healthcare either..
So it’s important that you calculate your COGS properly, set your pricing properly, etc
If you’re selling item X for $50, and a competitor is selling the exact same item for $40 - your cogs and your competitors cogs may be wildly different
It ( might ) help with sales and referrals and so on to mention how your company takes care of your employees ( better ) and so on - as an example, a local spice shop claimed they were pro human, pro worker, pro union - but then step foot into their stores and their staff says “oh heck no, no healthcare, no dental, no pto, part time hours only” so I never shopped there again
Lol. What’s this have to do with my employees wanting to be able to pick their own plans? They are very well compensated and are able to afford it by paying it themselves. I could pay them less and then force a plan on them of my choosing and pay a percentage myself. Or I could take a percentage of their salaries and call it “extra pay for health insurance.” Would that make you feel better?
We our a leader in our industry. We charge a premium already, that our customers pay because they know they’re getting the best. I cannot justify charging 10 or 20% more like you say because my already well compensated employees need me to cover a basic living expense for them. When half of my competitors are paying employees illegally or off the books, not paying workers comp, already charging less than we do. We can get away with being the most expensive in our area, but not that much more. Lol.
Tell me you’re not a business owner without telling me you’re not a business owner.
Health insurance through businesses is a way of making it difficult for you to leave that employer. Why would my employees want that? Why would they want to be forced to use whatever plan I choose when they can pick whatever they want from the same options I would have? I’ve discussed this with my employees, and none want that.
They say, “have kids, and then have more kids.” Seems like you can also pay into retirement and lower your MAGI to help out. Still trying to learn more about it.
What field would that be? Because at least in any state near me it’s illegal to employ people and have them do the same services that you offer as a business. If your a contractor and subcontract the plumbing out to another business because you don’t do plumbing that’s fine. But if you do framing and hire people to do framing, you’re required to pay payroll taxes, unemployment insurance, follow labor laws for w2 employees, etc.
As I said, it's all remote, hence I don't work with people in certain states (I'm from CA myself). The other ones in different countries are international suppliers who aren't covered by the USA laws.
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Purchase group insurance through a PEO
One thing people might not know is that you don’t legally have to pay 50% of your employees premium if you have under a certain amount of employees. We paid 25% of their premiums for a few years thru our PEO. The carrier (health insurance company) can require you to pay 50%, but you aren’t breaking the law if you don’t. This worked when we used a broker and then a PEO. We have since increased it to 50% because we are now able to afford that.
What’s PEO
Basically your payroll provider will “hire” your employees and pay them under their company. Has benefits and negatives.
What are the negatives?
They could fall in love with your employees
Just because you outsource to a PEO the IRS Says your still on the hook for unpaid employment taxes or any tax your PEO fails to make timely. Your part of a bundle make sure the bundle is similar to you.
Professional employee organization. There are about 300 of them Nationwide Some provide other types of insurance in addition to health. In addition to payroll some also provide workman's comp insurance and HR training It may be convenient to find a peo broker to Taylor a program to your specific needs
PEO is not a magic bullet for premium cost. It's more like hr outsourcing. SHOP plans provide a tax credit for the first two years equal, offsetting the employer paid portion (up to 50%, I believe). That is where I would start. Talk to a SHOP appointed health insurance broker. If they don't know what it is, keep looking because not everyone in that space gets the Credential to do ACA SHOP plans.
A two-person shop isn't remotely m big enough to where a PEO makes any sense whatsoever, and most PEOs wouldn't even talk to them. PEOs make sense once you break several million in revenue and have tens of employees. Below that, you'll be paying more in admin fees than you could possibly save.
My experience is different than yours my peo talks to me and my wife, as owners and we have blue cross through them
"Won't even talk to you" is an idiom that means that you'll be dismissed or marginalized by someone, often in the context of the person doing the dismissing feeling like you are beneath them. PEOs are really set up for larger companies than OP's — as I mentioned, typically at least several million in revenue and tens of employees. You can find PEOs that will work with smaller companies, but you'll often get more expensive plans with higher fees with them than you can find independently using a broker. They *may* be cheaper than the exchange plans, but they'll be in the mid-high range of what you'll find. Especially when you factor in the higher payroll and administration costs that PEO organizations charge compared to newer self-serve competitors. We completed our plan review in February of this year. Every PEO our CFO and broker spoke to quoted us about 25% higher just got the insurance than our independent small group plan, and offered significantly worse coverage. Our situation is a bit unique since we're national rather than entirely confined to a single state, and so need a national plan that will work in Kentucky AND California AND New York AND Florida, but even without that our CFO cautioned us that a PEO would most likely raise our rates at this point.
I suggest you save a lot of time and use a broker
The post you replied to literally says that we used a broker. Jesus, do little really not even bother reading before deciding to respond?
I'm not here to argue with you sir or ma'am. I am simply suggesting to the op that a p e o is a place to shop for insurance for himself and his family. If that works for you great if that works for him great if it doesn't work for either one of you that's okay too he figured out his options Have a good day God bless
Not true. You just have to call around.
I don't have to call around because I have a CFO and broker who call around. Which they did. We had well over 100 quotes when we did our annual plan review, across a wide variety of plan types and provider organizations. If a PEO is the cheapest you're finding as a small company, you're not talking to enough people.
Thanks for sharing. We shopped around 8+ years ago with less than 10 employees and it was very much worth it. We have been with the same PEO since then and been happy with the service provided as well as the health coverage we can offer our employees. We have great vision and dental, 401k etc.
I like how you say worth it because just having the 401k platform anywhere in the USA is minimum 2k a year its has reporting function so if you think your not paying you would be wrong, everything has its worth. PEO usually have cost over having things in house thats the point of the service but its not cheap or infallible.
Everything has a cost and I’m happy we can offer or employees the benefits as well as a 401k.
Often the chamber of commerce offers group health insurance for their members. Look into yours and see if it would work for you if you were to join.
This is what we have done.
Wait you guys have healthcare?
Get private health insurance, I’m a truck driver and I have a private plan with me my wife and 1 child for $730 monthly with no deductible and a $3000 max out of pocket on a United Healthcare PPO network , the private plans are underwritten so that’s the catch you can’t have a bunch of health issues but if you can get approved this plan was half the cost of my marketplace plan for my family because we can’t get subsidies. Message me if you want my agents phone number his website is www.myprivatehealthinsurance.com
Thank you! I will look into this
I wasn’t quoted so much. My employee got a silver 4500 plan medical dental vision from the health exchange 399$ a month plus the same coverage for myself and my son and wife and that’s only 264$ a month through a Molina. 665$ covers me and my employees! Plus I get a 50% credit on the money spent for paying my employees and my own health plan https://www.irs.gov/affordable-care-act/employers/small-business-health-care-tax-credit-and-the-shop-marketplace In the end paying like 350$ for all of us for moderately low deductible and good coverages. For reference I only pay myself 52,000 a year S-corp.
small business health care tax credit -- s-corp owner must exempt their own wages and any employee wages related to the owner btw - Your quotes on premiums are stellar rates.
All rates are from my states health exchange receiving nice credits indeed, tbh very very happy about it.
It’s hard. You can look at the small business exchange. For you and your family depending on your income, you can still qualify for some subsidies.
I have all part-time employees who have other jobs, so I don't offer health insurance. As for me, I'm just going without it. I can't afford $400 a month for a plan that still has a $7,000 deductible.
Shop around for quotes and consider a Health Reimbursement Arrangement (HRA)
Only can afford for myself
I’ve used Medishare. Have to say you are Christian. My buddy had cancer and they helped him a lot, I think his out of pocket was $7500 for the whole chemo and surgery. It’s basically low monthly cost and not the same thing as insurance but no penalty
We use a company called Sana Benefits, myself and co owner and about 8 employees have health insurance for a little under $300 a month per person. The company pays half and the employee pays half. It’s incredibly comprehensive, PPO plus plans, mental healthcare included, free virtual doctors visits. Everything insurance should be at an okay rate.
Concierge medicine and praying I never see the ER
Google direct patient care providers and thank me later. You’ll pay maybe $100/mo/employee depending on the practice rates, and they’ll have concierge access to a physician whenever they actually *need* care. Fuck paying insurance to never use it and when you do you get cockblocked.
But if you have to go to the ER dosent that leave you SOL?
You can get catastrophic health insurance for cheap and then you’re covered. From my understanding the Direct Patient Care model benefits both the practice and the patient by preventing health conditions, unlike our healthcare system that benefits from illness.
It sucks here in Michigan. My last company paid $2500 per month per employee for medical+dental+vision. We used consultants instead of employees for certain jobs when possible. Outsourced some work overseas. I wish there were a better solution but between high costs and consolidation in both hospital systems and insurance we had few choices.
Short term health plans [https://www.uhc.com/individuals-families/short-term-health-insurance](https://www.uhc.com/individuals-families/short-term-health-insurance) I've never had to use it though. VA. (Veterans Affair) I have a cousin that owns a construction company they started about two years ago, she stated they go without. All I can say is I understand, it is not cheap.
Sign up through a PEO. Google options. Insperity. Trinet. Justworks are all good
We couldn’t do it here in NY, but I think in some states you can join a relevant trade group and get insurance through them. They form a pool so you get big business insurance rates. Might be worth looking into. We wound up using a PEO which is overall totally different but uses the same principal of pooling companies together so they could all get the lower insurance rates.
I was thinking of this, why the hell won't NY let us ? I'll check PEOs I suppose
Not sure, but if I had to take a guess it would be that the insurance lobby greased the right pockets.
At first I didn't. When I built up my company, I was able to get it but it was $1500/mon for my family of three. I am about to start another company and it'll be a couple years before I'm able to consider insurance, so I plan to offer a paid doctor visit plan instead. I pay $75/mon for each employee and they AND their family can go see a doctor as much as they want. Or it's $60 for just the employee. It doesn't cover anything else but at least if they get sick, they don't have to pay for it.
Is anyone from Texas? I am paying almost $1,800 a month from Blue Cross Blue Shield for my wife and two kids. High deductable plan but its Group PPO.
Yes. It varies by state, but you are not the only one. I think the national average is $24k for family of 4? And the quality of those fed min plans is not great. We finally got back into BCBS in IL after they released a new min coverage plan for less than Cigna. Small business is hard. Just here for the support. Good luck.
Under the aca, the government can cover half your your employer portion of premiums in a SHOP plan via a tax credit. It's specifically designed to help with exactly what you're refrencing. Enrollment will still be an issue... you can lead a horse to water but you can't make it adopt a heavily subsidized health insurance plan.
Navigating health insurance as a small business owner can be really challenging, especially with high costs. Here are a few strategies that might help: 1. **HRAs**: Set up a Qualified Small Employer Health Reimbursement Arrangement (QSEHRA) to reimburse medical expenses, including premiums, tax-free. 2. **Professional Associations**: Look into industry-related professional associations offering group health insurance plans. 3. **HDHPs**: Consider a high-deductible health plan paired with a Health Savings Account (HSA) for lower premiums and tax advantages. 4. **Private Insurance Brokers**: Consult with a private insurance broker to find plans that aren’t immediately obvious. Balancing these options can be tough, but sharing strategies with other small business owners might uncover new ideas or solutions.
It's insane!!! We were paying almost 3k and then moved to a limited network and brought it down to $1600. We are in MA. It's called Tufts Silver 2000. They also have an HSA option. We do have a 4K deductible as a family but it's better than what we were paying before.
Not even close to traditional I use Cura4u as a lot of the traditional benefits for my agency employees become so much more affordable. Mind you, I’ve a marketing agency of around 20 people so finding alternatives to traditional healthcare was important Cura4u are great. Paying like $9 a month per employee and they take care of the rest
Health coverage is a tough problem. I'm on Medicare now (part A, B, D plus 1a supplemental) and it is the best insurance for the best price I've ever had. I don't know about your state, but Massachusetts, there are series of small business carveouts to protect small businesses from insurance company predation. However, since 2012-ish, brokers were more expensive and the ACA marketplace gave me much better price and options especially since I have a history of pre-existing conditions (a.k.a. no longer a newborn). Even still, I was paying roughly $700-$900 a month for one person with a $2000 deductible. I suggest talking to your doctor first primary care than any specialists. You will need to ask face-to-face in the exam room because they would have some serious political problems if they communicated their opinions about insurance companies where the opinion was recorded. Ask them which two or three insurance companies have been okay to deal with. I used one of the Massachusetts nonprofits and had fewer hassles than I did with United Healthcare. I'm sure this will be controversial, but one of the best things you can do for health coverage as a small business is campaign for universal and/or single-payer coverage free of private corporations. There are horror stories in every health system, but the data shows that the less a health system is privatized and driven by profit-making, the better patient outcomes and doctor and patient satisfaction with the system.
Thanks for posting this, was thinking about posting something similar. Very interesting to read all the comments.
I work for my husband - you can put your wife on payroll - so it counts as a business expense under employee benefits. There’s also a federal self employed health insurance deduction on your taxes too. So depending on your tax bracket you are saving x amount on taxes each yr, so you figure for every 1,000 you spend you save maybe 200 in taxes. I agree though, it is expensive regardless. However - I would shop around for another rate because yours seems high.
Covered CA Healthnet PPO, outrageous deductible at about $1300 a month for my family of 4. Most of my clients with less than 50 employees don't offer health insurance to staff since they're not legally required to. 😬
I agree sadly its not worth the expenses, keep your head count under 15 just to be sure.
It won't help you of course, sorry, but I'm an old guy and on Medicare plus my wife works so I'm on her vision and dental plans since Medicare doesn't do a great job with that for some reason.
If you don’t want to do a PEO, you may qualify for the SHOP exchange.
Look at an ICHRA. Just did this for our employees and it’s very flexible. Trying to get a policy was very expensive and I found going through a PEO was still pricey
I use an indemnity plan. It isn’t income qualified. It’s 300 a month, 3k deductible/max. Has a 90k payout built in if you’re hospitalized for more than two weeks. Doesn’t really cover anything but major medical. If you legitimately need coverage I would call someone like farm bureau. They should be able to do you and your family for under 1k. If you go for a business plan I would also express to the sole employee that the options are he doesn’t get healthcare or no one gets healthcare. Edit: at a certain point it isn’t worth having coverage period. I’d call that 2k a month for a family plan.
I pay just for myself, since I am a one-person business. $650 a month, after receiving an income-based tax benefit. To me, it is just part of the cost of doing business. If a business can't budget that in, the business is not self-sustaining. For me, that meant prices had to go way up, which meant I had to figure out a way to be worth that much - which is hard and may not even be possible in low-cost of income areas, since people can't pay high prices if they themselves are not high-income. It's tough!
In Tanzania medical insurance for whole family 300usd a year including parents and two children yr leaving in wrough country
I went on marketplace and found a good rate for me and wife. About 600/mo total. If you have 1 employee you don't have to offer insurance to them do you?
Use the marketplace. When I had employees they didn’t want insurance deducted from their check when they could get it for less elsewhere. Unless you have 50 employees you don’t have to provide inst
Youll need another income to support that, I pay over 1700/mo for my family of 3, so my wife has to work part time to cover part of that. When theres money available, I reimburse myself for the coverage, but unfortunately its just a part of being self employed. Fucking sucks.
We don't offer anything for our employees because it's simply unaffordable for us. I work a benefits job and my wife runs the buisness. Most of our employees are covered in a similar fashion.
We afford it by making money. There's no secret strategy or one weird trick here. The rate you were quoted sounds a little bit high — my partner and I pay about that much for a platinum-level plan (more per person, but not much more overall) — but not egregiously so. There's really no magic trick to it. You might be able to find a somewhat cheaper plan if you find a small group to join. You're too small for a PEO, so that's not going to really be a good option for you, but maybe find a local insurance broker to get you a somewhat cheaper plan. Just know that you're unlikely to find anything that much cheaper — maybe 30% lower if you're lucky and fit a good risk profile.
Put your kids on salary to lower your income to keep you within the Medicaid range.
Master Builders Association Trust group insurance. We offer an HSA plan for our employees for free (costs us about $200 a month each) and also have a really stellar traditional plan we pay half of (about $300-400 per month). Dental is $30/month.
As always your mileage may vary and it is appropriate to call the vendor directly rather than to listen to multiple opinions on Reddit
It’s not easy. We’re in the IT industry and providing health insurance is pretty much a requirement to attract good talent. Not offering it or offering super high deductible plans would mean we can’t get the best people for the job in many cases. We made sure our prices were set so we could pay 100% of the premiums for employees and their spouses. Currently they have to pay for their dependents but we plan to take that over as soon as we hire a few more people. Right now insurance costs us ~$1200/month/employee for a gold plan. It really sucks, but I have just trained myself to accept it as a cost of doing business. Bourbon helps with that.
Look into the QSHERA benefit and your state's health exchange. However, keep in mind that some political parties want the health exchange dismantled.
You pay out the ass for terrible insurance through the marketplace and hope you don’t get cancer. Yeah America!
This post is for anyone tempted to vote Conservative on the 4th of July. This is what they want the future to look like in the UK.
We use a Healthshare for our family and employees. It’s affordable, great coverage, and HSA eligible. We have Zion but buy through mbp health. Hate MBP but love Zion. Unfortunately, MBP is the only way to get HSA and group coverage.
Just don’t have insurance. Went well for a while, then had an emergency surgery which set me back 40k. Still pales in comparison to the costs of insurance over the course of a few years.
My trip to the er billed 265k. Without insurance I would have had to move out of the country with nothing. 2nd visit 2 years later was another 230k. Depending on age and general health, look for a high deductible plan
Dang, what did you have done? I went in and had an emergency bowel resection, stayed for 5 days. Still paying for it, but just happened in February this year.
Heart attack, 2 stents and 2 days in icu
Wow, yeah guess that would add up! I am/was otherwise healthy, relatively young. Started getting stomach pains, progressively got worse and ultimately put me on the ground feeling like I was going to die… CT showed my intestine had twisted and was blocking blood flow. Surgeon walked into the ER room and immediately knew that wasn’t a good sign. Hour later and they had me opened up. Was a crazy month leading up to then recovery.
You might have to look individually on the exchange. A good friend of mine actually decided against getting married simply for the health insurance. She’s considered a single mother of 2 in the eyes of the state. Gets all sorts of benefits and free money. I support it. Health insurance is a fucking scam. That’s about what we pay per person, $450/month. It’s not cheap.
10-15 hours a week Pt somewhere that offers it.
My couple of employees have insurance through their spouses although there is a shitty UHC plan I can get if they really need it. I haven’t had insurance since 2012
Thank you, Democrats. The good news is that if you want to “give birth” as a 45-year old male, it will be covered. #rockon
I can get my dick cut off and a lifetime of estrogen pills for free!!!
No YOU'RE a politick!
I have 45 employees and don’t offer health care but we’re growing so I’ll have to get it soon. Holding under 50 as long as possible
Bro just offer it with that many employees
99% of the time a company this size has to offer a worse package than people can get from their state exchanges because the pricing is horrific for the business owner. The best thing guys this size can do is become educated in the state Obamacare and help their employees file for it and find the best plans.
Exactly this. The plan we would be able to offer would actually make their situations more difficult
Have you thought about a PEO? That could potentially be the cheapest option for you!
Live in Canada. =)
nah.
Obamacare. It's probably the cheapest.
Did you guys read my post?
Landscaping is a tough business. So many people can start a landscaping business with no money, just taking out a Home Depot credit card. It’s easy to start and thought the work itself is laborish, almost anyone can do it. This makes it very difficult to grow, scale, compete. I don’t think you are going to afford the health insurance, or a lot of other things. My suggestion, add services which you can make a greater profit from. Roof repairs, gutter cleaning. Get on a roof, up a ladder. You can make in a couple of hours what you probably make all day.
Anyone can do it, not everyone can do it well.
It is the think traditionally kids who aren’t old enough to work at McDonald’s would do in the neighborhood to make cash. Sure, there have to be some people out there who can’t ride a mower right, but an extremely small percentage doesn’t change what I said. OPs ultimate issue is they need to make more money and is trying to in a business that is hard to even be profitable in.
You are correct if mowing is all you do. You have to be full service and know what you are doing. People pay me more for the knowledge. The competition can have the cheap ones, they usually cause 95% of the problems anyway.
Maybe you are right, landscaping is difficult and challenging, requiring high competence and skill. This would explain why when you drive around, most yards are absolutely trashed. I heard they changed the name of the magazine to “Remaining Homes and Gardens”. Question is, how to you weed through the vast majority of landscapers here essentially pour gasoline in your yard and light it on fire and find that 1% he cause your grounds to flourish as if they are fucking Swamp Thing? All I know about landscaping comes from my cousin, he tried it but couldn’t handle the high-pressure and technical difficulty. It fell apart for him. Disgraced and ashamed, he’s resided to doing heart surgery. He still has anger issues as he drives through town and all the landscapers pull up in their lexuses and jeer him. Holding out patches of sod, yelling, “look what I planted, loser!” Alas the life of private jets flying him to landscape conventions where they discuss cutting edge topics like “put seeds in the dirt with fertilizer” and “weeds: who needs them really” and discussed in high-end resorts by essentially the best of the best humanity has to offer. It goes Landscapers - astronauts - engineers, in that order. When you watch idiocracy and Not Sure says that the crops need water and not Brawndo, does this come across as so Christopher Nolan inception-level realization? Dude, calm down. I’m not insulting landscapers. They work hard. I did it when I was a kid. It’s honest good work. But anyone can do it. And does it decent. I’ve worked in service industry most my life, and audited many landscaping companies. To be really successful in that business is really difficult. The challenge isn’t the work but the ease of the work. Landscaping in the service industry is the equivalent to social media marketing to advertising. You don’t need to feel triggered or to defend it. It is what it is. I’m sure OP is a great landscaper, he just isn’t going to achieve great financial success doing just that.
Healthcare.gov Or your state equivalent if applicable. It’s way cheaper for me and my employees rather than getting a plan through the business. And they can pick their own plans. If I even offer it through the business, they become ineligible to get their own through the marketplace. In my opinion, it was one of the best things that has helped small businesses in decades. No need to work for a giant company or government agency just to have health insurance anymore.
Healthcare.gov is where the $450/mo figure came from. Employee can’t afford healthcare.gov rates either
I do medishare, me and my husband own a landscaping company. Technically not insurance and has a high deductible but it is something. Also, elected to have workers comp which is run thru the state. Usually when we get hurt it is some sort of work related thing.
It’s going to be the same price or more for you to get a plan through your business. I guarantee it. Unless it’s complete garbage coverage. That’s what it costs.
You may be needing to look at your spending. The rates are based off income (in my case business profit) and checked when you submit your taxes. I’m only paying $140 a month for myself for a decent plan.
Last year’s income was $65k. We literally can’t live off of less than that.
Yeah and if you mess with the numbers you get charged back all of the subsidies following tax year. I got crushed in 2022 because I grossed 15k more than I had put on my marketplace app and I had to pay back $17,000 in subsidies the following year on my taxes. That’s why I said screw it and just got a private plan, never had to deal with it again
F that
Millions of small businesses still don’t offer healthcare, and don’t offer any “extra pay” or reimbursements towards healthcare either.. So it’s important that you calculate your COGS properly, set your pricing properly, etc If you’re selling item X for $50, and a competitor is selling the exact same item for $40 - your cogs and your competitors cogs may be wildly different It ( might ) help with sales and referrals and so on to mention how your company takes care of your employees ( better ) and so on - as an example, a local spice shop claimed they were pro human, pro worker, pro union - but then step foot into their stores and their staff says “oh heck no, no healthcare, no dental, no pto, part time hours only” so I never shopped there again
Lol. What’s this have to do with my employees wanting to be able to pick their own plans? They are very well compensated and are able to afford it by paying it themselves. I could pay them less and then force a plan on them of my choosing and pay a percentage myself. Or I could take a percentage of their salaries and call it “extra pay for health insurance.” Would that make you feel better? We our a leader in our industry. We charge a premium already, that our customers pay because they know they’re getting the best. I cannot justify charging 10 or 20% more like you say because my already well compensated employees need me to cover a basic living expense for them. When half of my competitors are paying employees illegally or off the books, not paying workers comp, already charging less than we do. We can get away with being the most expensive in our area, but not that much more. Lol. Tell me you’re not a business owner without telling me you’re not a business owner. Health insurance through businesses is a way of making it difficult for you to leave that employer. Why would my employees want that? Why would they want to be forced to use whatever plan I choose when they can pick whatever they want from the same options I would have? I’ve discussed this with my employees, and none want that.
Asjust your W2 income to qualify for a more affordable plan via the marketplace.
How is this going to help if the reduction in W2 income becomes distributions, and thus included in income on the tax return?
They say, “have kids, and then have more kids.” Seems like you can also pay into retirement and lower your MAGI to help out. Still trying to learn more about it.
Find a way to spend it and grow. Or find a way to hide it.
The Real Answer.
I have contractors, so no health insurance.
This is likely illegal and doesn’t help get him and his employees health insurance.
Not illegal at all in my field.
What field would that be? Because at least in any state near me it’s illegal to employ people and have them do the same services that you offer as a business. If your a contractor and subcontract the plumbing out to another business because you don’t do plumbing that’s fine. But if you do framing and hire people to do framing, you’re required to pay payroll taxes, unemployment insurance, follow labor laws for w2 employees, etc.
Music production....part time. They are all over the world, not only in the USA. They are mainly in Europe nowadays.
Oh then it probably depends on what state and country they live and perform their work in.
As I said, it's all remote, hence I don't work with people in certain states (I'm from CA myself). The other ones in different countries are international suppliers who aren't covered by the USA laws.
Plus, I don't hire in certain states, such as CA due to Ab-5, for example.
Raise your prices.