[drewrbaker]

I run a 20 person digital agency in Los Angeles.

The amount of time we have to spend each year sorting out our healthcare for the entire company is mind blowing. You are totally correct, it becomes a full time job for 3 or 4 weeks for myself and another partner. So much effort and knowledge required for something that isn’t even our core business! And it inevitably causes drama with employees who don’t like some part of the group plans we end up with. Very stressful.

We only offer it as our employees all say that this benefit is really important to them. I didn’t know it was a tax break for us to be honest.

I wish more employees thought like you did. Our average monthly cost per employee is about $500 for a “silver” PPO plan, and about $110 for dental. Average age of our employees is below 30.

I’d gladly pay employees the $610 extra a month just so we don’t have to deal with it and the drama that comes with it. This would actually save us money from the energy wasted dealing with insurance companies. And no one who’s dealt with our insurance plans over the years has had a positive experience. My brother (who worked for my company) cut his chin while out of state. Required 2 stitches, and he just walked to the closest ER to get them. $3500 it ended up costing him, even with our insurance and countless hours fighting the insurance companies too. Didn’t even see a doctor, a nurse did the stitches. It’s a joke.

Other than salaries, health insurance is the largest expense for our business. Think about that at the scale of the entire economy and its mind blowing the wasted energy/effort on this “system”.

I’m originally from Australia. We have “socialized” healthcare there. My brother is back visiting family currently and got an x-ray and ultra sound for $310. The American system is absolutely embarrassing.

[helsinkiandrew]

Why is this? (I'm used to European 'socialized' healthcare). Is it just the amount and type of cover offered by different policies is wide and opaque, the age/health of the employees effects the price/cover?

Aren't there insurance brokers that provide tools to compare simply. Would a system that allowed employees to vote/order the cover they would like in the plan and then you to adjust the price point until you get matching policies that provides an acceptable level of cover.

[gen220]

Each insurance company offers a myriad of different policies, and they change a little bit every year.

Brokers will educate you on specific plan mechanics but will avoid explicit recommendations because they don’t want to take blame for choosing the “wrong plans” for a company.

Each plan is optimized for specific scenarios, e.g. young person with no medical risks or chronic conditions, middle aged person with chronic conditions and established doctor affiliations, so on and so forth. But they aren’t explicitly labeled that way, so people have to figure out what makes sense for them.

If you’re an employer who cares a lot about this process, you basically need to mind read the healthcare needs of each of your employees and offer a menu of options that satisfies their needs, while trying to avoid offering options that nobody should rationally choose.

If you know nothing about health insurance it makes the whole process much harder.

Source: worked in American health insurance for years.