

Ask HN: How do we buy US health insurance for a remote team? - dfabulich

Everybody on our four-person team is a US citizen working from home; each of us resides in a different state. (CA, MI, MA, NY)<p>We&#x27;re trying to buy group health insurance for our team, but we can&#x27;t find any way to do it. All of the health insurance companies we&#x27;ve tried to contact require that we have at least 51% of our employees in that state. They literally won&#x27;t take our money.<p>Does anybody know anybody who has solved a problem like this? What do we do? Whom can we call?
======
dangrossman
Have your employees purchase their own insurance and reimburse them. The
federal (healthcare.gov) and state marketplaces have made comparison shopping
and enrolling little harder than buying something on Amazon.

~~~
dfabulich
Then we can't reimburse on a pre-tax basis. :-(
[http://www.irs.gov/Affordable-Care-Act/Employer-Health-
Care-...](http://www.irs.gov/Affordable-Care-Act/Employer-Health-Care-
Arrangements)

(Plus the premiums are higher.)

------
bullcity
I'm currently researching this as well. The healthcare marketplace has a small
selection of multi-state plans.

[https://www.healthcare.gov/small-businesses/provide-shop-
cov...](https://www.healthcare.gov/small-businesses/provide-shop-
coverage/business-in-more-than-one-state/)

------
caw
Not sure what the minimum number of required employees is or how much extra
this costs per employee, but there's payroll services like Oasis and Trinet
that offer insurance in addition to their payroll.

~~~
dfabulich
Yeah, we called Zenefits (one such service) and they weren't able to help us.

~~~
phonon
Trinet can definitely do this. (It's a PEO, not just a benefits
provider/agency.)

