Common Pitfalls Employers Face When Choosing Group Health Insurance in California

Offering Small Group health insurance plans in California to your employees can include some pitfalls as you can imagine when dealing with something so valuable and multi faceted. As we point out some of the hurdles Employers often face we are happy to show you creative ways to solve the issues.

Choosing The Right California Health Insurance Carrier

Choosing the wrong company to do business with can be a disaster. Make sure your carrier has a strong AM Best rating, has posted their insurance license number on their website, and has current Provider contracts with your doctors, medical groups, and hospitals of preference. The insurance industry can attract fraudulent businesses because there is so much money at stake. Make sure you go with a leading California health insurance carrier and not some fly by night operation with a deal too good to be true.

Information Overload

You will quickly discover one of the biggest favors you can do for yourself and your employees is to narrow the options to the best available and provide highlighted information for comparison, plan selection, and enrollment . The subject often confuses your employees quickly which makes them anxious and frustrated. We will assist you in providing condensed information which contains only the specifics your employees will need to make choices crucial to their health care and pocketbook.

Plan Choice

State of California regulation AB 1672 requires the regulated California health insurance carrier to offer qualifying Small Businesses coverage, and they also must offer all the plans marketed to all business. In other words they can't hide any plans from you. Once qualified for coverage the plan choice can be tricky. A single plan is not going to meet the needs of all your employees.  We suggest you offer more than one plan choice but not too many. Less is more. Most commonly an HMO and a PPO plan to make sure low out of pocket on expenses and flexibility of doctor choices are available. Getting the employees to agree on the right plan for everyone is not always easy, but with a little flexibility any group can be satisfied.

Employee Participation

As discussed in our overview on employee participation you may have a problem getting enough employees to participate in the group insurance plan you are offering. This can be a tricky one to solve as it's almost always a matter of dollars contributed from you, the Employer. The obvious fix is of course to offer to pay a greater amount of employee premiums. More creatively understand part of the problem is that historically your employees may not have had to pay a percentage of their premiums. As costs have risen year after year and Employers split the premium costs with employees there is an adjustment period where your employees realize that health insurance is not free.

In offering your benefits package to your employees there will be some hurdles, but utilizing an experienced Group health agent can clear up the confusion and jump the hurdles as they arise.