Ask HN: How do US freelancers/ small companies(1-3 person) buy health insurance? - sr_banksy
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davismwfl
My 2 cents. Unless you are funded or are expanding in staff over the next year
by a significant amount I'd avoid commercial plans until after 15 employees or
you have funding and are planning an expansion. Instead, have everyone pick up
personal/family plans and then reimburse them for those plans at some rate.

Commercial plans are not easy to setup, take time to maintain and have a lot
of variability based on size, demographics of your team etc. So when you are
small it is cheaper and easier to use the personal insurance market in the
U.S. and just do reimbursements.

Other option is to look at third party companies that do benefits management.
There are a number of those around where essentially you and your employees
become employees of that company as well for the purposes of benefits
management. The costs are not insignificant so you want to make sure you
factor this in as they generally manage the payroll and all benefits at that
point to make sure taxes etc are managed properly.

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thesecuremethod
You have to look around and see what commercial plans are available to you.
Depending on where you are, there may be subsidies available to you. What
state are you in?

