Group Benefits

Business owners all across America consider adding group benefits to help with employee retention. In addition to all-around better health insurance, employers like to offer other benefits to their employees like dental, vision, life, and disability insurance.  These plans are offered to employees for less expensive rates than if the employees tried to find them on their own.  As an employer, there are several advantages for adding group benefits:

• Happier, Less-Stressed Employees
• Employee Premiums Paid Pre-Tax
• More Diverse Plans to Choose From (compared to the individual market)
• Business Owner gets Payroll Deductions and Lower Payroll Tax
• Lower Premiums (compared to the individual market)
• Larger Selection of Insurance Companies (compared to the individual market)

Six Rules When Considering Group Health Benefits

Affordable Premiums

Premiums must be "affordable" and meet the "minimum value" standard.  The definitions change annually and current values can be found at: 
https://www.healthcare.gov/glossary/affordable-coverage/

Employee-Only Premium

While an employer must offer health insurance to every full-time employee and their dependents (but NOT their spouse), the employer is only responsible for covering a portion of the employee premium (See Affordable Premium).

Definition of a Group?

To be considered a group, a company must have at least 2 unrelated employees. In addition, one of the employees must be a W-2 employee. A husband/wife or father/son employee team WILL NOT qualify as a group even if one of them is a W-2 employee.

Section 125 Plan

In order to offer premiums on a pre-tax basis, a company must establish a Section 125 Plan. Also known as a Cafeteria Plan. These plans are usually very inexpensive to establish and are easy to set-up. Pre-Tax premiums offer company savings on payroll and FICA taxes.

COBRA and MiniCOBRA

COBRA must be available to all employees. This will either be Federally-Backed (COBRA for 20+ full-time employees) or State-Backed (MiniCOBRA for Less than 20 full-time employees).  Typically a Third Party Administrator will handle these services.

All Other Benefits

Other benefits like dental, vision, life, and disability, do not have to be offered. However, they can be offered without the employer having to cover any of the premium. This is called offering benefits on a "voluntary" basis.  Obviously, an employer can choose to cover some (or all) of the premium which is known as "employer sponsored."

Get a Group Benefits Quote:

If you are a business owner looking for group benefits for your employees, use this spreadsheet to get a quote on group benefits:

STEP 1:  Fill in the Title/Contact information at the top (if SIC code is unknown, leave blank, but be sure to indicate "nature of business")
STEP 2:  Medical, Dental, and/or Vision quotes:  Fill in ALL ORANGE COLUMNS (including company information at the top of the form, and all employee's home zip code)
STEP 2a:  LIfe, Short Term Disability, & Long Term Disability quotes:  Along with the ORANGE COLUMNS, please complete ALL BLUE COLUMNS.
STEP 3:  If more than one business office, please indicate those zip codes.
STEP 4:  Email completed form, confidentially, to: info@mazips.com.