Health Insurance

moon

We have always paid 100% of our salaried management employees health insurance premiums. We had no concern about doing this since all employees in this class were being treated equally; premiums are becoming so onerous that we now plan for the first time to ask these employees to participate in the cost. There is a wide range of salaries in this group and we are considering a participation rate that will be proportionate to the individual salaries but realize by doing this all employees in this class would not be treated the same. Have any of you faced this same situation.

Thanks,

Moon in Louisiana

HRinFL

Moon: Welcome to the forum! If you post this in the Benefits section, you will elicit more responses.

IMHO, wages should not be an issue. I am sure that you have a wide range of salaries for hourly non-management positions and the idea of charging different premiums based on the level of compensation for hourly ees has never been discussed. When you negaotiate your contract with your provider (vendor) you set different tiers based on who will be covered under the plan (ee only, ee/spouse, etc.). If you are going to charge management for their coverage, treat it the same way.

ritaanz

Although the concept of having the employee pay in proportion to his salary sounds reasonable, I do not think that is the way to go. You should come up with a percentage of the premium that all employees would be charged. Then use that percentage to calculate the payroll deduction for the individual employee and the type of coverage they have.

deniseE

we just started a 1% contribution...it's a fixed amount, w/d from paychecks bi-weekly. We also teamed up with our provider to offer a "healthy living" incentive. for ee's that participate they can reduce their contribution up to .5%

It's a sad fact of the world. The other thing that might help is to provide an accounting in the paycheck of all employer paid benefits...

sandra_d

At my former employer, we did charge different amounts to employees based upon their tenure (the longer the employee had worked, the less they had to pay ... every two year increments up to ten years of employment the employee paid 5% less) and then also had employees who earn more pay more of the premium (employees earning under $30,000 paid the least toward their insurance, with the other break-points being under $55,000 and under $80,000). We used a spreadsheet that we set up in Excel to help us calculate what each employee contributed.

AJ SPHR

More employers are doing this - setting up "salary tiers" and requiring higher employee contributions from those who earn more. I know a large employer implemented this 2 years ago. Yes, there was grumbling but it was the company's philosophy that higher paid employees should pay a greater % of salary to help fund the overall costs.