Alternate Funding of Group Health Insurance

The Georgia small business health insurancesolutions that are the most effective aren’t always the most mainstream. Our employee benefits professionals can guide you through alternate funding options that could be the ideal solution for your company.

Turner, Wood & Smith employee benefits personnel have extensive experience in alternative risk transfer markets and provide clients with comprehensive information about prospective options. These types of plans are especially beneficial to companies that want to maximize the financial effectiveness of their benefits program over the long term.

Two of the Georgia small business health insurance programs we can assist with are:

• Self-Funding: Self-funding is a way to maximize management of the insurance portion of your cash flow by eliminating insurance company margins while maintaining the most favorable balance of risk and cost effectiveness. An employer has a self-funded group health plan if the employer assumes the financial risk for providing health care benefits to its employees. Rather than paying fixed premiums to an insurance company who in turn assumes the financial risk, the employer pays for medical claims out-of-pocket, as they are incurred. Generally, employers who have self-funded plans will set up special funds to earmark corporate money to pay for employee medical claims.
• MERP: A Medical Expense Reimbursement Plan (MERP) allows an employer to reimburse employees for qualified medical expenses which are not income to the employee and are fully deductible as an expense by the employer.Georgia companies can use a MERP as a way to lower small business health insurance costs but still cover the employees qualified medical expenses tax free. The employer has a defined benefit maximum per year. If and when an employee has a claim, the employer will reimburse up to a certain benefit maximum. MERP can only have employer contributions, and there is no rollover permitted. The employer keeps the funds, not the employee.

Still not sure what type of small business health insurance solutions are ideal for your company? Contact us now to discuss all the possibilities.