How to a Select Health Care Plan for a Construction Company

Despite all our efforts to create safe, healthy jobsites, accidents do occur and people do get sick. If you want a career in construction, or you’re thinking about starting your own construction company as a sole proprietor or with a small crew, you have to think about health insurance.

If you’re young and single, you might skip health insurance altogether and charge full steam ahead into your own business. If you’re married and have children, you may decide not to start your own business at all. If your spouse works and receives health insurance from his or her employer, you’ve hit the lottery. Forbes reported in May 2023 that the average monthly premium for a family in the Affordable Care Act Marketplace ranges between $928 for a bronze plan, $1,217 for a silver plan, and $1,336 for a gold plan. One thousand dollars a month is $540,000 over a 45-year career. That’s lottery-type money. For us small-time business owners, government-provided universal healthcare starts to look pretty good, but until that day comes, if ever, the ACA Marketplace provides a variety of health insurance plans (healthcare.gov).

The marketplace is designed for people to compare and buy insurance plans. It has four categories of healthcare plans: bronze, silver, gold, and platinum. Bronze plans are high-deductible health plans (HDHP) with low premiums. Platinum plans have the highest monthly premium but pay the most for medical care. (Very few platinum plans are available on the Marketplace platform or directly from insurers.) If you’re healthy, a bronze plan may be your best option. If you have a lot of medical expenses, a higher-premium gold or platinum plan may be less expensive in the long run. The four levels of plans are differentiated based on their actuarial value, which measures the generosity of benefit coverage. The higher the actuarial value, the more the plan will pay. The actuarial value of each plan is as follows: a bronze plan covers 60% (policy holder pays 40%); silver, 70%; gold, 80%; and platinum, 90%. When you review plans in the Marketplace for purchase, it’s important to understand premiums, deductibles, copayments, coinsurance, and out-of-pocket maximum. We can use a discussion of a bronze plan to illustrate each.

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