Health Insurance Options for Small Business
Matt Deichmann: The fact that a woman has launched an entrepreneurial endeavor does not mean that her other life transactions come to a screeching hall. Marriage, divorce, illness, motherhood, how do you keep yourself covered with Health Insurance.
Susan Rash: And usually first question you’re going to ask yourself is okay do I cover myself to the business or should be covered on my spouse’s plan.
Matt Deichmann: Health care is consistently among the biggest challenges facing small business owners. This gathering of women business owners is now exception. Here at the 2007 WIPP conference, the question of how to secure health insurance coverage was on the minds of many entrepreneurs.
Annette Taddeo: The health insurance is used are huge as used as women business owners. We as women understand the importance of having health insurance coverage for our employees even if we have under 50 employees and we’re not required by law to have it, we want out employees to have health insurance and we feel that more of our obligation.
Karen Clark: I’m an employed benefit consultant so I’ve been working with small businesses midsized businesses for over 20 years helping them to gather their employed benefit package. I am very interested in the debate or the discussion about health care.
Matt Deichmann: Susan Rash is Vice President of BB&T Benefit Consultants. Rash says many small business owners also want to know where to find health insurance coverage for their employees. Rash suggested three websites for research. Healthinsurancefinder.com, eHealthinsurance.com and opm.gov. OPM is an abbreviation for the Federal government office of personal management.
Susan Rash: Business folks that put together the Federal employee benefit program. You can go out to this website. Click on the employees section, click on insurance options and you can see what every Federal employee is charged per month. For every plan that’s available in every state.
Matt Deichmann: Laura Trueman is Executive Director of the Coalition for Affordable Health Coverage. Trueman says there is another resource many people are unaware off. She says 33 states have health insurance, high-risk pulls.
Laura Trueman: And frankly, you will find that small business owners and small business employees are often the ones that end up in them. If you don’t have employer’s funds for health insurance and you have to work in the individual market, and you or your spouse, or your child has an illness, and you get rated up so high, that you can’t pay the premium, the place to go or the place to tell your employee to go is the state high risk form.
Matt Deichmann: Trueman says for this state health insurance, high-risk pools there’s no asset test and no high-risk test to qualify. The National Association of Insurance Commissioners has a website to help small business owners with questions about the insurance and it makes smarter decisions for their enterprises.
Most business insurance issues are covered at www.insureyouonline.org/smallbusiness. In Washington DC, I’m Matt Deichmann for sbtv.com where small business is our only business.
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