Navigating Self Employment: 3 Ways You Can Still Qualify For Group Health Insurance Plans

8 June 2022
 Categories: Insurance, Blog

Share

While there are many benefits to being self-employed, there are also some tasks that seem to be a bit more complicated for the self-employed. One of these tasks is obtaining affordable health insurance. The reason for this is that many people rely on the health insurance plans offered by traditional employers in order to get the coverage they need at an affordable price. However, the truth is that you do not need to work for a large company in order to qualify for the group health insurance plans that these companies traditionally offer their employees. In fact, you can take advantage of these group plans even if you are the only employee your company has. The trick to accomplishing this goal is to simply redefine the way you think of an insurance group. Below you can learn more about some of the different groups that will qualify for group health insurance plans. 

Groups Based On Profession

Most health insurance providers simply require that a group has a unifying characteristic in order to qualify for group health insurance plans. The most common way that self-employed individuals accomplish this goal is by joining together with other people in their profession to form an insurance group. This type of insurance group is often best suited to individuals who share a profession with many other self-employed individuals. For instance, while you may not find many self-employed teachers, many artists and musicians are self-employed. Consequently, these individuals are more likely to find a large group of individuals in their same profession who are interested in purchasing a group health insurance plan.

Groups Based On Location

If you are not successful in finding enough people with whom you share a profession to form an insurance group, you can choose to open your group up to a larger number of people by defining this group based on your location. For example, you could choose to open your group to all self-employed or freelance contractors in your city or even in your state. In some cases, this option will prove more beneficial since it will allow you to recruit larger numbers of people for your insurance group. The reason this is important is that the discount you receive on your group health insurance plan will typically be based on how many members your group has. Allowing group members to add their spouses and children to the plan is another easy way to increase your group size and therefore increase the discount your group enjoys.