So you may recall this dilemma:
One medical insurance broker told me that California law prohibited carriers from charging variant premiums rates to small businesses, so they had to differentiate themselves by giving great service.
Meanwhile another company that actually charges to deliver more comprehensive "services" around employee benefits was telling me they could save me 20% on premiums.
The California law the first guy referred to is AB 1672 and is described here. And yes, it reads like he said: for companies with between 2 and 50 employees carriers can only charge within 10% of particular rate "bands" per age and zip code.
So, was the other guy blowing smoke up my ass? (Which sounds medically undesirable.) Actually, probably not. I believe if you go with this all-in-one service, there is some way in which your employees really become their employees, and therefore part of a much-larger-than-50-person company.
The downside is that it seems like one of those situations where they don't actually give you a reasonable, comprehensible break-down of costs, but rather roll it up in their all-in-one quote.
Suffice to say: all I was able to get out of them was that administering HR services for 1-4 employees costs $1K a month, besides the premiums. And from what I can tell about the premiums broker #1 quoted me, there goes any savings right there.
We're moving forward with the company that was more responsive, open and, nice side benefit, doesn't actually charge us anything!
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