Lets talk insurance as a company provided benefit.

As most of you know, I run a small company. Currently 5 employees. At present, the benefits package is paid holidays and vacation time. In planning for the future, I would like to provide medical insurance to attract new employees and to take care of the ones I have. With that in mind, I've made some calls and gotten some pricing.

My question is, how much of your medical insurance does your employer cover. Do they pay a percentage of your coverage or 100%? Two employees have wives and children so they would probably need family coverage. Does your company pay a percentage of the family or just the employee? My admin has insurance through her husband's job. Do the employees that don't opt-in get something for that?

What other types of insurance does your company provide? Dental? Life? Is it paid by the company or through payroll deduction? 

Any info or thoughts would be appreciated. 

We pay 100% of health insurance premiums for all of our employees and their spouses/children. 

Yes, it's really expensive.

Yes, it gets way more expensive every year.

We want healthy people, and figure that might not happen if healthcare was a financial decision. 

My company pays half of my insurance as a nonsmoker. No family portion. Also a portion of life,dental, and vision. 

I currently work for a small employer (6 people, including the 2 partners), who does not offer insurance.  I am covered under my wife's corporate policy (health) and I have my own term life insurance, purchased at retail.

I do not know what percentage of the premium is covered by her corporate employer, because we don't know the actual total premium, we only know our share.  I can confirm, but I want to say our part of a typical high-deductible health care plan is about $300 a month for the pair of us?  Plus they contribute about $1800 a year to our HSA to help cover our deductible.

Sorry I don't have more definite numbers, but I can look up our confirmation from last year's enrollment when I get home.

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We pay more for Employee + Spouse than we would just to cover her.  I don't think 100% more.  The next level up is Employee + Spouse + Children - no differentiation for number of children.

Her plan requires spouses to be on the spouse's employer's plan if that plan is available and costs less than $100 a month (I think - that's what it used to be when I had access to insurance through my old employer).

They also offer Dental and Optical.  I think Optical is included in the premium above.  Dental is extra; maybe $50 a month for 2 of us?

Employer provides life insurance for her at something like 2x salary, and me at some small amount like $50k.  We pay a little extra to up her to 3x or 4x salary.

All of this is handled through payroll deduction.

Legally you need to pay 50% of the employee only. If you pay more %, then it needs to be the same for everyone so you do not get into trouble. It can get expensive, so run the numbers. 
 

That being said, we paid 100% of employee and family, medical, dental, vision because as stated above, it takes a lot off of the employees mentally. If you want good people, treat them as well as you can. People that did not opt in, did not get anything for not doing so (again for legal reasons). 

We're a very small company, 3 employees, all family. We pay 100% of medical premiums, for the whole family. If we had non-family employees I have no idea if we would continue that, it's just never come up.

Past 3 organizations that I have been employed with (1) paid 50%, (2) paid 25% (calculated based on salary, the more you make the more you pay), and (3) 80% with free vision insurance. All had Dental and Vision. I don't find Vision as useful cost. I had the family plan for all 3, the more kids you have didn't increase the cost. I always choose the premium choice because my kids are young and sick frequently. 

Our agency pays all but a portion of our health insurance. The amount we put in depends on our position. I pay $180-ish every two weeks for a really good policy, plus an ok dental plan and mediocre vision plan. It is pretty much the only reason anyone stays with this E36 M3show.  

My company pays 100% of my coverage (for a not-so-great policy), but nothing for family, etc. There are add-ons (like dental, accident, etc) that are offered I would have to pay for. 
 

One note on family versus employee only... For a small company, there is a glitch that can cause a lot of trouble for employees with single incomes. The ACA calls for affordable insurance for employees, but my family members are NOT employees, so there is no obligation their coverage be affordable.  I could add them, but my cost would be over $350 per WEEK. For my wife and 1 kid (who have never had health issues). It also disqualifies me for ACA subsidies, because I have "affordable" insurance available to me (though not my family), but make more than the threshold for assistance. 
 

It means my family is not well covered. It's very stressful. 
 

In a sense that's not your problem, but it does happen, and it can stress your employees.  
 

I was almost better off when I didn't have it. Then it was clear cut- if we wanted coverage for our family, we would have to buy it, and it would apply to the entire family (both working and non-working).  It was cheaper.
 

Good luck!  I admire your intentions to do well be your employees (though I found it difficult for many years of owning a business)

One other note...

I'm not sure if this applies to you or not because your business is a very small niche (and you may not have many competitors). 
 

Providing insurance for my staff meant I had to raise my prices, and my competitors did not provide insurance for their employees. I priced myself out of the market competitively and couldn't get jobs.

Then, I got a reputation I didn't really want. "He does great work, but he's too expensive". The reality was I actually made much less than other contractors, but provided better salaries and more benefits to my employees. 
 

Eventually, it did me in.  I closed up shop and all my employees lost their jobs. 
 

Know your market, and your competitors.

in recent years i've paid anywhere between $100 and $500 every 2 weeks for employee plus spouse plus children in a "standard" medical / dental / vision plan. Employer contribution drives employee contribution.

I previously worked for a smaller family owned business.  It was 50% cost for family and the rest was mine (dental, eye, pet)

They thought it was awesome to bring Aflac all the time for extra stuff all funded by the employee.   

When I quit and went on Cobra for 3 months the price tripled so I'm not sure if they were jacking me around?   

Duke said:

I do not know what percentage of the premium is covered by her corporate employer, because we don't know the actual total premium, we only know our share. 

The answer is probably on her W2.

My F500 employer pays about 75% of the cost for my family's health insurance premium. If it was just me, I would have less coverage and they would pay about 85% of the cost. This breaks down to about $19k paid by the company, $6k paid by me. It does not include the out of pocket expenses, which are high, though they do provide an HSA and put $600 into it for me. The HSA saves me about $1,000 in income taxes. 

My wife and daughter are covered. Employee only is the cheapest, Employee and children (doesn't matter how many) is about 1.5x the cost, Employee and spouse is about 2.25x the cost, and Employee+spouse+children is about 3x the cost.

Some bullets: 

• My company is self funded. They're big enough to do that. Because of that, they require the Covid vaccine, and provide the flu vaccine via sending nurses to every campus. This is not a political statement or any of that nonsense, it is just a "huh, if we're going to cover people, we're going to require them to protect themselves against our biggest risk in the cheapest, most effective, easiest, and safest way which is a vaccine"
• As a 32 year old with a wife and daughter whom are on my insurance, this is as big of a consideration for a job as there can be. I've turned down two jobs this month because their health insurance was so expensive for me. I also don't answer the salary requirements until I know what the insurance is going to cost me. 
• We pay $100 extra each month, on top of what it would normally cost, because my wife is offered health insurance through her employer. This is common. It is still cheaper for us to have her with my daughter and I because it is cheaper than having 2 deductibles.
• I love having life insurance through the job, just because it is much easier.
• Dental insurance is often a waste. We get it only when we know we're going to have big procedures. But it is basically a huge scam. We are breaking even this year with my wife getting a crown, but otherwise, we'd have forgone it and are only doing it as a "just in case" I need something big done this year. Talk to your dentist to get their take. 
• Vision insurance is nice, because I have an odd eye "thing" that I like to keep on top of, but I can get it affordably elsewhere. Not a big deal. 

My political statement: The fact that our healthcare is tied to our employment is killing the US in numerous ways, the largest being financially, and the fact that many would-be entrepreneurs cannot do it because of the "golden handcuffs" that employer provided healthcare creates. 

EDIT: I forgot my rant about dental and vision insurance being separate things. Ah yes, those luxury body parts of mine, they're not important to my health! Edit2: My friends daughter has a condition that means she'll need extensive dental treatment until she can get veneers put on. He's looking at $30k this year for it. The alternative is quite literally removing all of his 3 year olds teeth... which would probably be $20k? I have no idea, but it is absolute insanity. And he has good health insurance and whatever dental insurance his company provided.

I'm in Canada, so 95% of what I know doesn't apply in the States, but when my wife and I both had supplementary benefits that covered spouses through our jobs (dental, prescriptions, etc., with basically identical coverage), opting out wasn't possible. OTOH, the insurance companies themselves had a standard procedure: the company that picked up the tab for a given expense they both covered was the one whose client's birthday came earlier in the year. Over time, they all came out more or less even.

Simple and effective, but I have no idea what happened if the spouses shared a birthday.

By my math my company covers 82% of my premium.  They also contribute to my HSA.

I have a HDHP, so the amount of my medical expenses that are actually covered by the contribution ranges from the 82% above down to around ~55% ($0-OOP Max) then up to a theoretical 99.999% assuming I rack up a giant bill beyond that.  (this is seat of the pants math)

Over the last decade, employers paid between 70%-100% of health care premiums, depending on the employer and the type of policy. IIRC my current employer pays 90% of the premium for our HDHP for this year, used to be 80% last year.

We also have vision and dental that I pay for, seems to be cheaper via the group plan at work than if I had those individually.

My company is currently looking at some changes for the positive but for right now we pay $900/month and that can be just for the employee or for family for health. 

We pay $25/month for aflac type things.  

We have around 70 employees and that will probably go up 50% in the next year.  We also start employees with 3 weeks PTO and 1 week volunteering time paid in the first year.  

My company pays about 75% of the premium and dental - vision - life are included.  Several options are offered from cheap-o to a top of the line PPO.  Spouses / domestic partners and children are included but if your spouse / domestic partner has insurance available from their employer and they don't take it, you need to pay something like 2.5K extra per year for them.

As some of you know, I work for a HUGE multi-national software/eCommerce/cloud/database company. The big overall company is somewhere in the 175,000 employee range. An F100 company.

For my premium, they pay 90% of my HSA and about 50% of the premium for my fiance. I was able to put her on my policy years ago as a domestic partner, even though we aren't married yet. These percentages aren't exact, but pretty close. 

My really amazing coverage for just me, health/dental/vision, is about $40/month. With my better half it's around $200/month for both of us and they contribute $1000 to my HSA every year. It used to be $1500/year, but I got a raise last year that pushed me over a limit, that lowered the contribution.

Even with an HSA, our coverage is outstanding. My fiance has RA, and if you know anyone with it, the medicine is horrifically expensive. We pay nothing for around $8k/month in medicine for her. My insurance has allowed her to take jobs she enjoys vs having to worry about insurance. 

Another large company person here so not sure how applicable my experience is to the OPs question.  We have options, one is paid at 100% but is an HMO style or for an approximately 10% contribution I can get a PPO style which is much more flexible.  Spouse is covered at the same rates as was my child when she was on the plan.   Dental is offered and is a pretty dang good package compared to what I've had in the past.  I'm having to go through an implant right now and I'll only be out of pocket for about 25%.  Vision is offered but once it covered (only partially) lasik, my wife and I both had the surgery and havent had a continuing need to maintain it.  Life is paid out a 2x salary without contribution and can be increased with contribution, spouse can opt in on life as well for a minimal rate.   $1000 a year deposited to an FSA/HSA account to cover other expenditures.   I dont always love my job, but I do love my company.

Funny part though and without getting too political.  My company is based out of one of those "good" socialized countries that everyone touts when they want to discuss socialized medicine.  My colleagues at HQ are jealous of our coverage in the US and there is NO dental coverage offered.   As someone who has a horrid dental history that really surprises me, I'd be in a lot of trouble without good dental coverage.

I pay $139 every two weeks for my family insurance, the company pays (or claims to pay) $697 for the same period. I believe they are required now to say what the value of that is since it counts toward benefits or something. I will say that my insurance has always been excellent but we employee 36,000 people so probably have pretty good buying power.

I work for a non profit community theater with a staff of 5.  One of the staff members is part-time but they still offer the same benefits to her as well.  She refused them because she has a full ride with a better plan through her husband's employer.  I realize I'm pretty lucky in this aspect, but the theater pays for all of it, it's BC/BS and includes dental and vision.

Well, in reality the way the group plan is structured, employees are required to make a contribution, so they withhold $1 from our paychecks as our contribution.  As I understand it, I'm getting about a $1000/mo plan for medical, dental, and vision into which I pay 66 cents for vision, 66 cents for dental, and 68 cents for medical per month.

It's even a very good plan.  I just picked up a script for prednisone (stupid gout) this morning and it was $2.08.  My other scripts are mail order and all three of them together are about $14 every 90 days, but there isn't anything specialty about the drugs I take - blood pressure, gout, yadda yadda... stuff that's cheap anyway.  PCP visits are a $5 copay and specialist visits are $15.  Urgent care visits are $35 and ER is $75.  Three mental health visits for $0, then enough for weekly visits for a year at a $40 copay. (I think it's 50 visits at $40)

I'm not suggesting you do all of that, but one of the ways the theater takes care of our compensation is through our benefits.  Our salaries come from operating revenue which as you might expect for a community theater are not great.  My salary therefore is a bit below average.  They work hard to get sponsorships and donations to underwrite the benefits expenses and make sure they are very good.  I mention that so you maybe take my example with a grain of salt.  They fluff up our benefits because they can't pay us what we're worth, so to speak.

I appreciate the input everyone. Thanks.

One minor thing to add, my company has an additional option besides employee only, employee/spouse, and employee family.  They offer employee and children, it accounts for divorce , as well as two income parents that both have insurance.  It is a little cheaper then family as I recall.