Last year, 2018, marked the second full year small businesses had access to the qualified small employer health reimbursement arrangement (QSEHRA). PeopleKeep examined this period recently in our original study, The QSEHRA: Annual Report 2019.

In many ways, small businesses used the QSEHRA much the same way as they did in 2017. In total, they offered similar allowance amounts and their employees used about the same percentage of their available allowance as they did last year.

However, with an additional year of data behind us, we can draw new conclusions about how small businesses are using the QSEHRA now and what that means for reimbursement-based health benefits in the future.

In this post, we’ll go over five of the most important conclusions we drew from The QSEHRA: Annual Report 2019.

Let’s dive in.

Employees with access to a qualified small employer health reimbursement arrangement (QSEHRA) continued to take full advantage of the benefit in 2018, according to results from The QSEHRA: Annual Report 2019 from PeopleKeep.

The report is our second yearly look at how small businesses and their employees use the QSEHRA. Not only did we find that businesses are increasing their offerings through the QSEHRA, but we also discovered that employees are using most of the tax-free allowances they’re given.

While small businesses increased QSEHRA allowances by 6 percent for single employees and 7 percent for employees with a family, employee utilization remained relatively steady. On average, employees used roughly 78 percent of the tax-free money made available to them throughout the year.

Employees also continued to use their QSEHRA allowances for critical health care expenses like health insurance and medical office visits.

In this post, we’ll examine these and other findings from The QSEHRA: Annual Report 2019 as they relate to employee use of the benefit.

Let’s get started.

It’s been two years since small businesses first had access to the qualified small employer health reimbursement arrangement (QSEHRA). In that time, the popularity of the benefit has grown and businesses have leveraged it to increase their offerings to employees.

With a QSEHRA, businesses offer employees a monthly allowance. Employees then choose and pay for health care, including insurance policies. The business then reimburses employees tax-free up to their allowance amount.

At PeopleKeep, we provide the industry’s first and only look at data from real businesses offering the benefit. According to our findings in The QSEHRA: Annual Report 2019, businesses offered an average $297 a month to single employees and $445 to employees with a family in 2018—an increase of 6 percent and 7 percent, respectively, since 2017.

In this report, we’ll dive more fully into those findings by examining the allowance amounts offered by businesses across company size, state, and industry.

The creation of the individual coverage health reimbursement arrangement (ICHRA) has many organizations excited. The new benefit, available beginning January 1, 2020, allows groups of any size to reimburse employees tax-free for individual health insurance and other health care expenses.

The prospect of setting up the benefit can be intimidating, though. Getting started with group health insurance is easy, but because HRAs are less familiar, there can be a learning curve.

Fortunately, getting started with any HRA—including the ICHRA—is actually very simple.

In this post, we’ll go over the six steps required to set up an individual coverage HRA and start offering the benefit to employees. We’ll also discuss the advantages of using ICHRA administration software.

Let’s get started.