A Guide to Health Insurance Options

Table of Contents

Part 1: Insurance Basics

Part 2: Getting Covered

Part 3: What's Available in My Region

Part 4: Helpful Hints & Info

• Hospital Costs

Important Facts

Employees consider health insurance to be, by far, the most important fringe benefit.

• More Facts...

Part 2: Getting Covered

Here’s a standard list of business data you’ll need to provide:

Employer name. The legal name of your company.
Address of your business. Insurers need the street address, not a P.O. Box, to determine your region or service area.
A list of employees you plan to cover. Not all employees will be eligible.
Tax identification or employer identification number. This is the EIN (sometimes called FEIN) you obtained from the IRS when you started your business.
Business background. Depending on the size of your business, you may have to provide:

date your business started
payroll records
Standard Industry Code (SIC or NAIC) informing the insurer what industry you’re in.

Quarterly salary and wages for the past two quarters.
Employee census information. Insurers use this to estimate the health care costs your group is likely to incur. A census does not include health status, race, religion, sexual orientation (even if applying for domestic partner benefits), Social Security number, or U.S. citizenship/immigration status. In order to quote you a rate, insurers will ask you to complete a census form for each of your employees with this information: