Offering health coverage for the first time feels bigger than it is. A San Bernardino employer with a handful of staff can usually do it. The work is in choosing well and then running it properly. This page explains group employee health benefits, and names the questions we send elsewhere.
Do you have a group yet
California small group coverage can start with one eligible employee. That employee cannot be an owner or an owner's spouse. A shop in 92401 with an owner and two hires is a group by that measure.
Carriers then set rules about hours worked and how many eligible people enroll. Those rules are not fixed, so we read the current ones against your roster. You find out where you stand before you talk to staff.
What sits inside our work
Group employee health benefits
Group medical
Coverage for employees and, if you choose, for their spouses and children.
Dental and vision
Lower cost additions that staff notice quickly and ask about often.
Voluntary lines
Accident and hospital coverage that employees elect and pay for through payroll deduction.
The running of it
Enrollment meetings, forms, mid year changes, and the annual renewal.
What sits outside is just as clear. We do not sell or administer property, auto, cyber liability, or professional liability coverage. We do not do workers compensation, payroll, HR services, or HR software. We do not write key person coverage or buy-sell agreements, and retirement plans are not ours.
Payroll questions go to your payroll provider. Tax and worker classification questions go to your CPA. Retirement plan questions go to a financial advisor, and contract questions go to an employment attorney. We do not give legal or tax advice, and we will not pretend otherwise.
Networks, and whether your staff keep their doctors
This is the part that decides how a plan feels in practice. An HMO asks each person to pick a primary doctor and route specialist care through referrals. A PPO opens a wider list of doctors and costs the employer more. Staff who travel in from Colton or Redlands may see doctors nowhere near your door.
We collect the doctor names your team cares about. Each one gets checked against every plan on the short list before you decide. A no is useful in week one and painful in month three.
How much of the cost you carry
You set a contribution and we build around it. Employees cover the rest, and anything for a spouse or child, through payroll deduction. Dental, vision, and voluntary lines can be fully employee paid if that suits your budget. The point is a package you can keep offering next year.
Enrollment, in plain language
What we handle at enrollment
- A short briefing on video or by phone, repeated for staff who cannot attend
- The cost per paycheck for every option, stated once and clearly
- Private one on one answers, since nobody asks about a condition in a group
- Every form collected, filed, and chased until the carrier has it
After that, new hires and departures come through us all year. Your office manager keeps their own job.
Renewal, every year
Your carrier will quote a new rate for the same group. We take the census back out across the carriers we can place. Then we model each option twice, once for what it costs the company and once for what it costs a paycheck. Doctors get rechecked before any switch, and we file whatever you choose.
From San Bernardino to our office
We are in Orange, which from 92410 is a drive, so video and phone come first. In person means the Orange office, and it suits a first enrollment or a difficult renewal. Independent since founded in 2015, California license #0718082, with licensed agents. Our help costs you nothing, because the carrier you pick pays us.
Read group benefits for what a plan covers, then our process for how a first year runs. Send your headcount through contact and we will quote it. The San Bernardino page lists our other lines.
Group health benefits options for San Bernardino residents
Why San Bernardino residents work with us
- Community enrollment events.
- Independent - we represent 20+ carriers, not one.
- Bilingual English + Spanish daily; Korean, Mandarin, Vietnamese available.
- Same agent year-over-year - no call-center rotation.