Employer Subsidy Levels

[Guest CarlaMarie]

Does anyone have any pro/con information regarding providing lower wage earners with higher employer subsidy to purchase health care benefits? I work in the government sector and have had an employee send a letter to our leadership stating that their belief is we should use this methodology to subsidize since the lower wage earners end up spending a higher percent of their salary on health care benefits compared to higher wage earners (and often end up not being able to purchase benefits as a result). I've looked everywhere I can think of to see if there is any information I can feed back to our leadership group regarding the pro's and con's of taking this type of approach and have come up empty. THANKS!

[leevena]

Yes, you can do that. To do a complete pro and con would be difficult, but. The biggest issue would be the additional cost incurred by the employer for the premium contributions. Without knowing your type of coverage and the risk profile of the additional participants to be covered, I cannot comment on whether the claim costs would increase or decrease. As for the pro side, you are providing a valuable coverage for people. Hope this helps.