This question is for those that participate here that are custom installers AND have an employer provided health insurance program.

1. Does your company cover (*pay for*) you only or your entire family.

2. What portion (percentage) of your health insurance is paid for by your company? 100%? 50% etc.

And anything else of interest...

Actually, if you don't receive company provided health insurance coverage, I'd like to hear about that as well.

As a business owner I cover 70% of my employee insureance.

whata nice guy I am. BTW - Im hiring.

Health Insurance!
Funny trap they have set up.
Work yourself to an unhealthy state, so that you can afford it!

My company pays for 100 % of my health benefits. If i do get married, my spouse would be covered as well.
The big downer is dental. I only get some BS 10% off.

I have not yet got the boss to spring for insurance. The start of the new year is a good time to ask again, thanks for the reminder. I am interested in the feed back from this thread, the good and bad of various kinds of policies and insurance companies out there.

The company I work for pays 100% for the employee only and then we have to pay for added things like spouses, children and maternity. It's not too bad of a plan, small copays for most stuff, they pay 100% of accidentals, and we pay 20% of major stuff like surgery. No dental though other than what we pay ourself.

QQQ,

I am 75/25... Company pays 75%, I pay 25%, for me and my entire family.

This is ONLY health insurance

No vision
No dental
No retirement

I have dental coverage, and also radiology services are provided...

Now, I need an opthamologist, a GP, and an orthopedic surgeon for customers... LOL

I should continue by saying that me previous employer paid provided ALL of the benies for me and my family, but I had to shell out alot for it, they didn't pay it all...

First I'd like to say I don't normally post in public forums, but this subject is one of my biggest pet peeves.

Let me start off by saying, I do not now, have not, and will never directly pay for an employee's heath care.

Before I get into my reasoning, let us agree on one thing. No employee of any company is getting free heath care. Part of the compensation for the use of their labor is a combination of money, insurance, paid days off, and whatever else is part of the agreement.

With that agreed, what heath care benefits really are is the employer taking part of what the employee has earned and deciding how it should be spent. To me this is very paternalistic. Having employees is already to much like having kids.

But the biggest reason I don't pay for heath care is that I believe that skyrocketing cost have occurred because employers have upset the market by coming between the consumer and the service provider. If you look at what has happened to heath care services that people directly pay for you will see what I mean. Lasic(spelling?) is a great example. When it first became available it cost thousands, now it's hundreds.

I myself have a MSA and encourage my employees to do likewise.

Gary,
www.augustsystems.com

Gary,
I agree that insurance is not free, but part of the overall compensation for the labor contributed. However, the amount an employee would pay for health insuance on his/her own compared to the amount that is paid as part of a group plan(even with only 5-10 members) is far more money for the same type of policy.

I do agree that an MSA is a good plan as long as you are rarely sick. If you are single and never sick you can save on a lot of taxes. But if you have a family of five that goes to checkups and immunizations every few months it doesn't work out so great. With high deductible insurance that goes along with it, you end up paying more for all the small things such as office visits and the insuance benefits don't kick in until you have a "catastophic" thing like major surgery. It is good that it is in a tax deductible savings account, but bad if you ever need the money for anything other than medical expenses because it becomes federally taxed as income and adds on a 15% penalty tax on top of that.

The evidence that optional services that people pay direct for such as LASIK is a good example that pooled insuance is bad is not true. As with any cutting edge technology(look at DLP projectors in particular)when it first came out, there was a high demand for it and it needed to pay for its own research and development so they could charge what they wanted to. Now that it has been out for several years it is slowly decreasing in price. However there are new types of lasik machines that produce far better results than the first and second generation machines did(average 20/15 comared to 20/30) and the doctors charge thousands for services with newer machines campared to the discount eye center that will charge $4-500 an eye. I have 20/10 vision and you can take a guess as to whether I went to the discount office or the cutting edge office that may of charged more.

Gary,
One other point. If the company provides medical insurance an employee is more likely to use it (ie stay healthy) than if you give him cash and he has to pay out of pocket. And the goal for an employer is to have a health employee. Much like vacation time. You COULD just give cash instead of time, but an employer WANTS the empoyee to take time off occasionally so they don't get burned out.

Gary,

Don't necessarily agree with all of your points but I think I understand them.

As far as employees being like kids and giving them insurance being too paternalistic, that’s actually exactly how I WOULD like to think of a good workplace, as an extended family of people that are friends (even if not socially) that you care about. As such, I want all of them to have insurance and never have to worry that they or their loved ones cannot get medical treatment when they need it.

As a more practical matter, unless you are paying each of your employees 100K a year, I believe it is an absolute requirement to offer good health care coverage if you want to attract top-notch people. In other words, offering employees health care, especially in an industry such as our that needs skilled workers, can also be looked upon as a strictly SELFISH motivation. You can make every philosophical argument against it until you are blue in the face, but it is virtually impossible for a company to grow and find ***skilled*** employees without it, because the skilled employees will look elsewhere.

This message was edited by QQQ on 01/01/05 21:44 ET.

The whole health insurance industry is out of control, and no longer are the Drs the cause. It's now the insurance companies who are becoming excessively greedy. Thankfully, for employers, such a benefit can be a business deduction (exactly what percent it comes out to, I'm not sure). I believe similar expense deductions apply to indiciduals as well. The best thing to do is to talk to your accountant and ask for advice. Financial planning is always a good idea.

There are two ways to look at this...

1) If your employer does not provide health insurance, are you making more in salary than you would if your company was paying your insurance? In comparison to other local employers, that is.

In New York, average monthly insurance rates are around $350 for single and more for married/families. Figure out your insurance costs and multiply that by 12. If you're making at least that much more in salary, compared to other local employers, you're not doing too badly. So, in NY, you'd have to be making about $4,200 NET per year more, just to pay the single insurance rate yourself.

2) If you must pay your own insurance, talk to your accountant to see how you can deduct your insurance and related health expenses on your taxes.

I hope this was helpful.



Thank you,
Damon DG