In today’s market, small business owners have several options when it comes to health benefits for their work forces. These include:

• Offering a traditional health insurance plan
• Offering a lower-cost healthsharing plan to employees
• Combining healthsharing with a direct primary care plan
• Self-insuring

Self-insuring can work well for very large groups. But they are very risky and impractical for small employers, since they are costly to administer, and one large claim can destroy your cost projections for the entire year, and for multiple years at a time.

But traditional health insurance is increasingly impractical, as well, because of its high cost and the potential liability of administering a fiduciary ERISA-qualified health plan.

Choosing a healthsharing plan instead can substantially reduce cost and risk for small business owners, without sacrificing access to health care for your employees and their families.