Alternative Employee Benefits For Small Businesses

Providing employee health benefits shouldn’t bankrupt your business. We’ll show you alternative employee benefits options that cost as little as $25/month that cover your employees and their families, making your people happy and saving your business a ton of money. 

We talk to a lot of frustrated small business owners researching options for their employee health benefits. Nearly 50% of small businesses in the US don’t provide health insurance benefits for a lot of reasons. They’re extremely complex, cost a lot and take a lot of time to manage. But by far, cost is the #1 reason most small businesses don’t offer employee benefits. They’re frustrated by the extreme costs for even the most basic traditional health insurance benefits packages. 

Fortunately, there are alternatives to traditional insurance benefits. These alternative employee benefits products give your team real health benefits they will use everyday at a price your business can actually afford.

We know you’re busy and want to cut to the chase, so we’ve built this simple guide introducing the most common alternatives to traditional health benefits. 

Three reasons you should consider alternative employee health benefits: 

Cost Savings: Cost savings is the #1 reason to consider alternative health benefits. Traditional health insurance premiums continue to rise each year, making an already expensive product even less affordable year after year.

The 2023 KFF report shows that average annual premiums increased 7% in 2023 to $8,435 for single coverage and $23,938 for family coverage. They also reported that the average family coverage premiums rose 47%. There’s only one word for that…BONKERS.

Time Savings: In addition to saving money, alternative benefits take less time to manage since they’re much less regulatory restrictions and compliance issues to deal with. 

Employee Satisfaction: The 2024 MetLife Employee Benefit Trends Study shows that 60% of employees say benefits are an important factor when deciding where to work. Employees with benefits are shown to be 1.5X more loyal and 1.6X more productive too.

Bottom line, alternative health benefits save you money, save you time and make your people happier.

What are some examples of alternative health benefit plans? 

Healthshare Memberships

Healthshare memberships are programs, where members contribute monthly to share medical expenses. These programs, often run by nonprofit organizations or affiliated with faith groups, function as a big shared pool of money to draw from for major health expenses. pool contributions to share members’ healthcare costs as they come up.

Examples: See this article for a comparison of major healthshare plans.

How It Works

1. Monthly Premiums: Each month, the health share members pay monthly premiums which are pooled to pay members’ medical expenses. 
2. Get Medical Care: When you need to see a doctor, pick a provider and go. Most healthshare programs let you see whichever doctor you want. 
3. Submit Expenses: Submit your medical bills and make sure they follow the set guidelines. 
4. Reimbursement: the healthshare team will review the expenses and determine the eligible reimbursement amount based on their guidelines.  

Pluses

Lower Costs: Generally, Healthshare memberships have lower monthly contributions compared to traditional insurance premiums.

Community Support: These programs often foster a sense of community among members, who support each other’s medical needs.

Flexibility: Healthshare memberships can share in a wide range of medical expenses with less bureaucracy, including alternative and holistic treatments.

Minuses

Partial Payments: Though Healthshare memberships can assist with a lot of your medical costs, they are not insurance and may not share in all medical expenses. 

Pre-Existing Conditions: They may also have some limitations on coverage for pre-existing conditions. 

Direct Primary Care

Also called Direct Primary Care (DPC) is a model where patients pay a flat monthly fee directly to a primary care provider for a range of services. The monthly fees typically cover all primary care services, including routine checkups, chronic disease management, and preventive care. A well known example is One Medical.

How It Works

1. Monthly Premiums: Each month, the health share members pay monthly premiums which are pooled to pay members’ medical expenses. 
2. Get Medical Care: When you need to see a doctor, pick a provider and go. Most healthshare programs let you see whichever doctor you want. 
3. Submit Expenses: Submit your medical bills and make sure they follow the set guidelines. 
4. Reimbursement: the healthshare team will review the expenses and determine the eligible reimbursement amount based on their guidelines.  

Pluses

Personalized Care: DPC allows for longer, more personalized visits with your primary care provider.

Cost Transparency: Eliminates insurance co-pays, deductibles, and co-insurance fees, aiming for better access to care and lower prices.

Accessibility: DPC often includes easier access to your doctor, often including same day appointments and 24/7 telemedicine access. 

Minuses

DPC typically does not cover specialists, emergency room visits or major hospitalizations, so you may need to pair it with a catastrophic health coverage plan. 

Health Insurance Alternatives

Alternative coverage programs like Alliance Direct are built as low cost alternatives to traditional health insurance benefits packages. The Alliance Health Package provides the traditional “big three” Medical, Dental and Vision care as well as major discounts on prescriptions, diagnostic imaging and lab tests, and more. 

How It Works

1. Annual Fee: you, or your employees, pay the small annual fee, typically under $250 for the year. 
2. Care On Demand: employees get care when they need it, whether in the comfort of their own home or at a local provider of their choice. 

Pluses

Low Cost: products like the Alliance Health Package are less than $300/year for an employee and their family. That’s more than $8,000 less than the average for traditional benefits. 

Real Care: these packages include care from real doctors and dentists that your people can choose on their own. They get 24/7 telemedicine, mental health car, major discounts on dental work and a whole lot more. 

Family Coverage: The Alliance Health Package includes coverage for your employees and their families for one low price. No 3X increase for family coverage like with traditional insurance plans.

Minuses

Not Health Insurance: alternative benefit products like Alliance Health are not considered health insurance products.

Out Of Pocket Payments: Like most traditional insurance products, your employees will still have to pay out of pocket for some care. But, with Alliance Health they will have full price transparency and heavily discounted service prices. 

What else should I consider? 

No health insurance plan is perfect, but you know you have options now. 

You can also share the expense, or provide a monthly stipend for them to find their own coverage. A stipend is especially valuable in helping cover out of pocket costs when a spouse already has some kind of benefits package in place. 

And if you’re a business owner that’s interested a purpose built alternative to traditional benefits, please check us out.

The Alliance Health Package was built specifically to help close these gaps for small business owners.

For less than $20/month, Alliance members get free, or heavily discounted, access to 24/7 telemedicine, local dentists of your choice, discounted prescriptions-by-mail, discounted glasses and checkups, discounted lab tests and diagnostic imaging like x-rays and MRIs.

And remember that our Alliance Health package covers employees AND their family for one low price. 

That’s medical, dental, vision, Rx discounts and a whole lot more for less than $20/month.