Having Trouble Offering Healthcare Due to Minimum Requirements?

Would you like to offer health insurance to your employees, but minimum requirements enforced by insurance companies make it difficult?

Consider these questions:

• Are you a small or mid-size farm or agri-business?
• Do you want to offer health insurance to your employees but some of your employees do not want coverage making it difficult to meet the minimum participation requirements?
• Do you have two or more employees that would enroll if you were to offer a health insurance plan?
• Would your employees be interested in purchasing healthcare through work, even if you didn’t contribute or if you were to contribute less than 50%?
• Does access to a group plan – which typically offers better pricing and provider networks than the “marketplace” – interest you?

If you answered yes to the questions above, Agri-Services Agency may have a solution. 

The answer may lie in a waiver period found in the Affordable Care Act that offers a work-around to these minimum requirements.  If you meet the following criteria, you may be eligible for this waiver period:

• You own or manage a small to mid-sized farm or agribusiness – defined in most state as between 2 and 50 employees (with some exceptions) – and have a minimum of 2 employees.
• You have at least 1 common law employee (collecting a W-2).
• Your business is eligible for group coverage (an owner only policy would not be considered a group).

The waiver period runs annually from November 15^th to December 15^th and applies to policies with an effective date of January 1^st.  During the waiver period, both the minimum contribution requirement and the participation requirement are dropped completely.  This means that you can have as few as 2 employees enroll – no matter how many employees you have on your payroll and you can contribute as little or as much as you want to the plan on your employees behalf, even as low as $0.

If offering health insurance to your employees is something that you would like to do, but the minimum requirements enforced by insurance companies have made it difficult, Agri-Servcies Agency may be able to help. Please contact our Customer Service Center at 1-877-466-9089.  You can also visit our website at agri-servicesagency.com for more information or click here to fill out a form and request additional information.