Major medical through an Individual Coverage Health Reimbursement Arrangement — a defined contribution model where employees choose their own plan and the employer funds it.
ICHRA (pronounced "ick-rah") stands for Individual Coverage Health Reimbursement Arrangement, available to employers since January 2020. Rather than choosing a plan on your employees' behalf, you set a contribution and they select individual coverage that fits their own situation. It is more administratively efficient and more cost effective than traditional group benefits, and it satisfies the Affordable Care Act mandate to provide valuable and affordable coverage — employers have no penalty exposure when an ICHRA is appropriately deployed.
We work with you to design and customize your ICHRA solution.
An enrollment period is established, and we develop and distribute the enrollment and educational materials.
Employees enroll on our platform alongside our individual plan marketplace partner, working one-on-one with an enrollment advisor to choose a plan of their own.
Each employee provides their ICHRA debit card to the carrier they selected, and the card is charged monthly for the individual premium. The coverage is portable.
Employees may add specialty coverage such as dental and vision, and you may require certain coverages such as disability or group term life.
You report hours and remit funds to us, and we contribute them to each employee's ICHRA account.
After funds are discharged, you receive a monthly reconciliation report.
With group coverage you pick the plans, absorb annual rate increases and negative claims experience, and redesign benefits year after year to keep premiums affordable. An ICHRA takes managing a health plan and its underlying risk off your plate: your budget is never more than the contribution you set, and your employees decide which carriers, plans and networks suit them.
Individual marketplace plans differ from what employees are used to seeing from an employer. Because the marketplace is highly regulated, benefits tend to be comparable or richer, and employee-only coverage often costs significantly less. We will model the numbers for your workforce before you commit.