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ICHRA Plan

Reimburse employees for health insurance with an ICHRA plan

Reimburse your employees tax-free with an ICHRA Plan from the industry’s only ICHRA platform with hands-on enrollment support.

  • Manage benefits for an hour or less per month
  • No more surprises, renewals, or participation rate concerns
  • A smart, hands-off alternative to group health insurance
ichra-vs-qsehra
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ICHRA plan highlights

Take Command makes ICHRA administration simple and easy.

Flexible Designs

No more one-size fits all plans! ICHRA plans can be customized and designed to achieve you or your clients’ goals. 

Simple Administration

Take Command will automatically generate the documents your employees need and can help them search for and enroll in a plan online.

No Contribution Limits

There are no annual contribution caps. This allows employers to define unrestricted benefit budgets.

Learn More

Want to dive into the details of the individual coverage HRA? 

Our ICHRA Guide will walk you through how ICHRAs work, ICHRA benefits, and ICHRA setup. 

ICHRA Health Insurance

Join the 5,000+ businesses saving on health benefits with Take Command

Union Orthotics and Prosthetics

"Facing a 40% renewal, our broker introduced us to the idea. Take Command provides the tools there for everybody to enroll in very easy formats on the platform."

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Taro Health

"To attract and maintain talent, we needed benefits. Managing our ICHRA has been simple and hands-off. I spend two hours a month managing and administering it."

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StreamCare

"Take Command has made it simple to set up and administer the small business HRA for StreamCare and we highly recommend it to other small businesses."

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ICHRA: Read all about it

An individual coverage HRA, also known as an ICHRA, is a type of health reimbursement arrangement. HRA insurance, by definition, is not actually an insurance plan itself, but it is a form of health benefit. A Health Reimbursement Arrangement (HRA) is a kind of health benefits solution that enables employers to reimburse the employees at their companies for certain, qualified healthcare costs and individual insurance premiums. 

ICHRA plans may not be the typical method of providing employees with health benefits, but ICHRAs have some significant advantages over traditional group health plans, which can be needlessly complicated and very expensive. Health Reimbursement Arrangements, including ICHRAs, can eliminate the need to find a single group plan that fits the needs of all your employees at once, among other advantages. 

What is an ICHRA Plan?

Many employers provide their employees with health benefits in the form of a group health plan. An ICHRA, or Individual Health Reimbursement Arrangement, is a different method of offering health benefits to employees. According to Healthcare.gov's ICHRA definition, employers that opt for an ICHRA can offer “defined non-taxed reimbursements to employees for qualified medical expenses” of various kinds. Qualified medical expenses could include out-of-pocket expenses such as deductibles and copayments. In order to be reimbursed by their employer for medical expenses, employees need to have individual health insurance coverage. ICHRAs can benefit all but the very largest of companies and their employees in practically any industry.

There are a few different kinds of Health Reimbursement Arrangements, including:

  • Individual Coverage HRAs (ICHRAs)
  • Qualified Small Employer HRAs (QSEHRAs)
  • One-Person 105 HRAs
  • Excepted Benefit HRAs (EBHRAs)
  • Traditional HRAs
  • Standalone HRAs (ICHRAs and QSEHRAs are both types of standalone HRAs, but there are other kinds as well, such as Medicare HRAs, Retiree HRAs, and Spousal HRAs.)

How do ICHRAs work?

ICHRA health insurance can be a great alternative to traditional group health insurance for many employers and employees. But now that we've covered some of the benefits of an ICHRA plan, the question is: how does ICHRA work? ICHRA health insurance is actually very simple. Let’s break it down into a few basic steps.

  1. The employer designs their ICHRA plan. This step includes clearly outlining which employees are eligible for the plan setting limits on reimbursement, if there are any (ICHRAs do not have reimbursement limits, but other kinds of HRAs can have limits). 
  2. Next, it’s up to employees to select and purchase the individual health insurance plans they desire. 
  3. After employees purchase their plans of choice, they can then submit eligible reimbursement claims to the employer.
  4. Finally, the employer reimburses employees for all valid reimbursement claims.

This is a general set of steps that outlines the basic process of an ICHRA plan. On a more detailed level, employers design reimbursement structures that have different rates for different ICHRA classes, ages, family sizes, etc. They also set aside a monthly healthcare reimbursement budget. Then, they notify employees of the ICHRA plan and ensure employees understand what it means for them. It’s then up to employees to choose the individual health insurance coverage that works best for them. Our enrollment experts at Take Command can help employees navigate the process of choosing coverage.

Will ICHRA help you save on benefits? 

In about half the country, individual insurance rates are cheaper than their group plan equivalents, meaning health benefits dollars will stretch further with ICHRA. Use our heat map to see if your location is prime for saving.

ICHRA Pros and Cons

A common question from employers is which one is better: Individual Coverage Health Reimbursement Arrangements or traditional group health plans? It’s hard to make a universal statement on the matter. There are a lot of ICHRA benefits that indicate ICHRA health insurance can provide advantages to employers and employees alike in many cases. However, ICHRAs are not the perfect solution for every business. Let’s take a more detailed look at the various ICHRA pros and cons when measured against group health plans. 

Advantages: ICHRA Pros

  • More control over costs: Employers can take charge of their own benefits budgets each year instead of being subject to yearly group increases.
  • Greater plan flexibility: Employers can create a customized plan that works for the team instead of being forced to choose between whichever plans insurance companies offer. 
  • Greater network flexibility and personalization: Employees can select the individual plans and doctors that work best for them. 
  • Risk de-management: Employers no longer need to worry about factoring managing employees’ health risks into the business strategy.
  • Plan portability: If employees switch jobs, they can keep their individual health insurance plan and don’t have to lose health coverage.

Disadvantages: ICHRA Cons

Geography: Roughly half of the states have individual health insurance that's less expensive than their group plan counterparts. That means that in some states, health benefits dollars stretch further with ICHRA, but in other parts of the country, individual rates might be higher than a group plan.

Premium tax credits: If many employees receive premium tax credits to offset the costs of their health insurance costs, an affordable ICHRA will disqualify them from continuing to benefit from those tax credits.

Ready to get started?

Begin designing your HRA plan today and be set up in minutes. You could start reimbursing your employees tax-free sooner than you think.

ICHRA SETUP

Ready to Get Started?

Begin designing your ICHRA plan today and be set up in minutes. You could start reimbursing your employees tax-free sooner than you think. 

ICHRA Rules

It’s important for employers to be aware of some of the most important ICHRA rules. 2022 is nearing an end, and as we approach 2023, it’s a good idea to review resources like IRS publication 969 and IRS publication 502 to ensure you have a thorough understanding of the applicable Health Reimbursement Account rules:

  • Employees must have individual health coverage to receive reimbursements from their employers.
  • Employers must provide ICHRA-eligible employees with notice of their ICHRA eligibility at least 90 days in advance. 
  • Employers must verify that each employee is enrolled in an individual healthcare policy before they can offer them any reimbursement.
  • Employers can make ICHRA health insurance available to some categories of employees (such as full-time, part-time, seasonal, employees working from outside the United States, etc.) and not others, but employees cannot be eligible for an ICHRA plan and a group health plan at the same time. In other words, employers must decide if they will offer each category of employee ICHRA health insurance OR group health insurance.
  • Employers must clearly define their ICHRA in a document and that document must be made easily accessible to employees. The document must be written in understandable, everyday language (not legal jargon), or include a plain-language summary if the main document is written in legal language. 
  • ICHRA plans are held accountable to the rules and standards established by the IRS and the ERISA (Employee Retirement Income Security Act).

ICHRA vs. QSEHRA

Employers sometimes wonder about the difference between ICHRA vs. HRA insurance, but the truth is that an ICHRA is a specific type of Health Reimbursement Arrangement. However, Individual Coverage HRAs are only one type of HRA. There are other kinds of Health Reimbursement Arrangements as well. For example, a relatively new type of HRA is a Qualified Small Employer HRA, or QSEHRA (pronounced “Q-Sarah”). 

One of the most significant differences between a QSEHRA vs. ICHRA plan is that any company can set up an ICHRA plan, regardless of size, but only small businesses can offer their employees QSEHRA plans. In order to qualify to offer a QSEHRA, a business must meet the following requirements:

  • Employ fewer than 50 full-time employees.
  • Offer the QSEHRA to all full-time employees without variance except based on age and number of employees covered. 
  • Not offer any  kind of group health plan to employees already.

ICHRA vs. Group Plan

Traditionally, many companies offer their employees health benefits via group health plans rather than ICHRAs. A group health insurance plan is what most people think of when they imagine health insurance provided by an employer. When an employer offers a group plan, both the employer and the employee make contributions toward the employee’s health insurance coverage. Employees must choose from whatever selection of plans the employer chooses to offer, or may only be offered a single plan. 

So what exactly is the difference between an ICHRA vs. group plan? Perhaps the most impactful difference is that an ICHRA allows employees to choose their own individual health insurance coverage rather than being restricted by the plans the employer offers. There are other benefits as well, such as the ability for employees to take their health insurance coverage with them if they change jobs. 

ICHRA Administrators

ICHRAs are a relatively new type of Health Reimbursement Arrangement. If you're an employer who wants to start offering ICHRAs for your employees, you might feel like you don’t know where to begin. Fortunately, ICHRA providers like Take Command can help employers learn how to set up an ICHRA and help employees navigate their ICHRA coverage. 

ICHRA plan administrators like Take Command can make the process of setting up an ICHRA and reimbursing employees much simpler. Here are a few of the benefits ICHRA administrators can provide:

  • Access to software you can use to design a custom HRA with an easy, step-by-step process. You can also get in touch with one of Take Command’s experienced consultants for further guidance. 
  • Employee assistance to make it easier for your employees to select the best individual health insurance coverage and get them set up on the Take Command platform.
  • Automated reimbursement options for employers and streamlined processes for managing reporting and compliance. 
  • ICHRA administration cost varies from provider to provider. Take Command’s services start as low as $20 per month per employee plus a $40 per month platform fee. 

SIMPLE HRA ADMINISTRATION PRICING

HRA Administration pricing that’s simple.

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Starting at
$20/mo
Per Employee
  • Onboarding, support and change management
  • Autopay employee premiums
  • Customizable HRA design and reporting