Your employees are all in different stages of their lives, so they may need different things from your benefits plan.
A parent of two children in braces might need a little more to cover those costs than your dental benefit covers. Your manager might require more extended medical coverage for health prescriptions or mobility aids. That employee with the strong vision prescription might not be able to cover the cost of glasses.
A Health Spending Account (HSA) might be the solution. HSAs offer supplementary coverage to help your employees with things like benefit deductibles, co-insurance, and amounts in excess of their benefit coverage. Any expense that qualifies as a medical expense under the Canadian Income Tax Act can qualify for coverage under an HSA.
You can add further flexibility by adding a carry forward option. Carry forward options allow an employee to carry forward unused coverage or claims for a year, enabling the employee to apply it to larger, anticipated expenses.
While an HSA offers flexibility to employees, it offers stability to business owners because you choose the funding level. Costs will not exceed the total employee limits (plus administration expenses and taxes). Claims paid under an HSA arrangement are tax deductible, just like traditional group benefit premiums, and there are no set-up fees, no annual fees and no advance deposits.
You can also control the funds available throughout the year. You can assign an annual limit, or you can prorate it on a monthly or quarterly basis. These options enable you to plan your finances to cover the claim amounts in a timeframe that works best with your company’s cash flow.
An HSA is a stable, cost-certain way to provide your employees with additional group coverage for their individual needs.
