There are a lot of things that you need to decide before you begin shopping for your plans. Things like benefits levels, cost sharing with employees and choice of insurance providers would be your main points of concern. You definitely will not make any final concrete decisions at this point. You will more or less have to direct your broker in the right path. Once you do this you can tweak your plan later on.
The range of coverage
Early on you need to decide what sort of scope you are looking for in your coverage, whether you are going to be shopping for limited or broad coverage. If you are going for a basic coverage, the employees will obviously have to shell out a lot more whenever they go for their check up. But if you are going for a more comprehensive plan, the out of pocket expenditure will be minimum. You also need to decide the deductible amount that each of your employees have to pay. It’s even better if the insurance company allows you to have variable deductibles for each employee.
Choice of care providers
When you are deciding on your group insurance policy, the choice of providers offered is of utmost importance. The network of providers needs to be at a close proximity to the office or the residences of all your employees. And also some employees would already be well acquainted with a doctor and would not prefer to leave him or her. And it is these very employees that you want to retain given their years of experience. Try to buy alliances which will help you exchange networks with other groups.
Cost sharing with the employee
You will also need to decide what portion of the bills you are going to pay. There are two ways in which you can make a contribution. One, you can pay a portion of the premium every month. In fact it is required by the insurer that you pay anything above and beyond 50% of the premium amount per employee per month. Another way of contributing is to pay a portion of the co-pay. Whenever an employee visits the doctor, he would furnish the bills to you and you will have to pay an agreed portion of the co-pay.
Coverage rules and regulations
There is a lot of nitty-gritty associated with coverage rules. And the problem is that once you begin to understand them, you need to differentiate between the hard and fast rules and the options. For example, you need to figure out whether you want to provide coverage for unmarried domestic partners. If you do, then you will need to furnish an affidavit for such individuals stating that they are indeed cohabiting a house. And it gets really murky when trying to get the insurance company to pay up for such cases.
And of course, please check online insurance quotes before buying any policy.