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Ask HN: How do you offer health insurance to your remote team?

5 points by tdfx ↗ HN
Each person on the team is in a different state in the US, and we've been looking for options but we're thoroughly stumped. Does anyone have any success stories here?

Edit: All employees are full-time, W-2.

8 comments

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davismwfl
Let them get health insurance through one of the exchanges and then reimburse them for all or portion of it. Tell them to just submit the invoice.

This works until you reach a larger team and have legal requirements to meet. But if you are small with 4 or 5 people or really even 15 this works pretty well.

PeteLevi
This is exactly what my company does. My company provides a monthly allowance via Zane Health: http://www.zanebenefits.com/ . The employees can choose any plan they want and pay for it. Submit the invoices to the website and get a reimbursement as part of your paycheck up to the allowance. Works out pretty well.
jozi9
How would you deal with non-US residents?
mrfusion
Wouldn't you be paying for health insurance with after-tax dollars that way? Would the employees be taxed on the re-imbursements also?
bowlich
My employer does this.

The answer is yes. It is after-tax dollars. But the employee can get it back on their tax-return at the end of the year.

davismwfl
Yep, correct. It really does seem to work out well, and for the company it lets them make sure employees are taken care of but minimizes distractions of managing health insurance for now.
entreprenewb
Some plans offer a high deductible PPO option, e.g. if you're out of state/out of network then you pay up to $1k deductible and the plan covers the rest. Though that may not be feasible depending on your company size and existing plans. As others suggested, reimbursement may be the easiest route.
caw
The company I'm at uses a 3rd party company to handle payroll, taxes, health insurance, and some level of benefits (like 401k and "discount programs"). According to my understanding I'm a W-2 employee of my company and simultaneously the 3rd party. Because the 3rd party has an office in my state, I get paid via that branch, and pay taxes for my state and not my employer's state. My healthcare plan also differs somewhat from my co-worker's because of state required minimum coverage.