Every renewal, the carrier reprices your whole team off last year's worst claims. You pay more. Your people get less. And somehow this is just... normal. It doesn't have to be.
The average yearly premium for family coverage on a traditional employer plan (2024 KFF Employer Health Benefits Survey). The number moves every year. You don't control which direction.
Your 26-year-old remote hire and your 58-year-old ops manager get the same plan. It fits neither of them, and you pay full price for both.
One bad claims year reprices the entire group. You find out 30 days before renewal, when it's too late to do anything but sign.
The carrier picks the network, the drug list, and next year's price. You pick... the payment method.
Insurance is priced for disasters. Running routine care through that machinery inflates the cost of everything for everyone on the plan.
In 2019 the IRS and Treasury finalized a rule that lets a company set a fixed, tax-free monthly budget while each employee picks the coverage that fits their own life. The employer gets a predictable number. The employee gets a real choice. That rule, plus a newer kind of group plan, gives your company two serious tools. Which one fits depends on your roster. That's the part most brokers guess at. We don't.
A fixed monthly allowance per employee, tax-free, backed by federal rule. Works whether your people are in one state or fifteen. No renewal shock, because there's no group plan to reprice.
Looks like normal insurance to your team. Priced off your actual roster instead of a carrier's book, with money potentially coming back after a healthy year. Groups of 5 and up.
About five minutes. It reads your roster and tells you which move fits.
Five minutes of questions. A recommendation with reasons attached. No commitment, and we ain't going to chase you with seventeen follow-up emails.
Learn your Company's Benefits DNAICHRA: you set a fixed, tax-free monthly allowance and each employee buys their own plan, so there's no group plan to reprice. Level-funded: a group plan priced off your actual roster, with stop-loss protection and money potentially coming back after a healthy year.
That depends on your headcount, where your people live, your roster's age and wage mix, and what your renewals have been doing. That's exactly what the Company Benefits DNA quiz reads. Five minutes, straight answer, reasons attached.
We won't quote a savings number until we've seen your roster, because any figure without your numbers behind it is a brochure number. What we will do is show you real pricing before you commit to anything.
No. Starting from zero is actually the easiest position: you get to skip the mistakes everyone else is trying to escape. Even a modest defined budget changes recruiting conversations.
Under 50 full-time-equivalent employees, no federal rule makes you. But watch the math: part-time hours add up into "equivalents," so a shop with 30 full-timers and a stack of part-timers can quietly cross 50 and trigger the mandate without noticing. A few states add their own rules. We'll tell you which side of the line you're on.
Maybe, if you're under 25 full-time-equivalents, pay below-average wages, and cover at least half the premium through SHOP. The catch: it phases out fast as headcount and pay rise, so most 10-to-50-person firms don't actually land it. Worth a check, rarely the thing that decides your move.
