Buying Group insurance online

Buying Group Health Insurance Online

Small businesses are the perfect online insurance customer: wired and Internet-savvy. But only recently have 20 million American small businesses gotten the online attention they deserve, with several new Web sites offering online quotes and applications for small-group health insurance.

Some sites act as brokers, while others put you in touch with a broker in your area. Site features run the gamut, from bare-bones quoting services offering no insurance advice, to sites that bill themselves as "benefit portals," and provide reams of small-business benefits advice.

Making it work for you

At health insurance sites, the small employer can obtain an aggregation of group health quotes. You can select quotes based on deductibles and other plan features before you ever contact a broker.

Buying a health plan online, however, doesn't offer a better deal on premiums because of strict state regulations regarding premium levels. Although consumers can bind car insurance online within minutes, small businesses confront an online-application process that requires the same amount of work as visiting a broker in person. When buying a health plan online, you still must interact with a broker before purchasing the final product.

Obtaining a price quote, however, is fairly straightforward. Your quote is based on basic company and employee information. First, you'll need to fill out your name, the company's address, your line of business — either with a Standard Industry Classification (SIC) code, or with a descriptive keyword — and how many employees will be covered.

Next, you'll enter an employee census: name, gender, and age of each employee. (Some sites ask for specific birth dates, others for ages.) For each employee, you'll need to know whether a spouse or children will be covered under the plan.
The next step lets you outline plan requirements: Do you want maternity coverage? Dental insurance? Deductibles for hospital stays? These add-ons increase the cost, so it's best to know what you want before you apply for a quote. Also know how much of the premium you will pay, and how much will be paid by your employees.

That's it — you've applied for a preliminary rate quote. Now you'll be asked how you want to compare the plans that meet your criteria — by price, deductible, or plan features. What happens next depends on the site you visit, and whether it acts as a broker, or refers you to a broker in your area.