By Joni Foster, Program Director with EGBI

You’re a small business owner and you can’t afford to provide health insurance to your employees (or even for yourself). What do you do? You help your employees find the right plan on the Health Insurance Marketplace (Obamacare).

If you haven’t checked rates and plans this year, you will be happy, shocked even, at how inexpensive health insurance plans are. The American Rescue Plan passed at the beginning of 2021 added incredible subsidies to the Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare) making the cost of health care remarkably low right now.

What you as an employer can do is help your employees find a health insurance agent to guide them to the right plan. It’s free to use an agent and easy to find one using this online directory: https://www.healthcare.gov/find-assistance/. You, as the employer, might interview a couple of agents and then select one to recommend to all your employees. A simple half page write-up about getting health insurance with a name of a vetted agent and contact information is very helpful. The agent can also help you as the business owner to find affordable insurance!

Remember, affordable health care isn’t based on the number of hours someone works each week. It’s based on how much income the person earns; so, part time employees are eligible for this option also.

Helping your employees get access to good health insurance, even if you don’t pay for it, will mean something to your employees. It means that you care about them and their health.

Open enrollment begins November 1 until January 15, 2022, for health insurance coverage that begins January 1, 2022.

And you don’t have to figure out the best plan by yourself. In fact, you are better off talking to an insurance agent: according to someone’s statistics, 38% of people who enrolled themselves in a plan are happy with it verses people who used an agent, 85% are happy with their plan.