There are a number of advantages to offering health benefits to your workers. Here are a few of the major ones:

• Attract and retain the most qualified employees. Whether health insurance is absolutely necessary to attract and retain the most qualified employees will depend upon factors such as whether your competitors or other similarly sized employers in your area are offering health insurance.
• Gain tax advantages. You can offer employees something that increases their compensation package and yet allows you an income tax deduction for the contribution, so that your out-of-pocket cost is less than the value of the benefit to the employee. Self-employed individuals can deduct 45 percent of their health insurance premium costs as a business expense in 1998 (rising to 60 percent in 1999 through 2001, 70 percent in 2002, and 100 percent in 2003 and beyond). If the business is incorporated, all costs for your own insurance as well as your employees' is deductible.
• Offer employees group purchasing power. Even if you decide not to contribute anything towards your employees' health insurance, you can offer them the opportunity to obtain group rates through your business.
• Ensure the wellness of your workers. Many insurance plans offer preventative care that can keep employees healthy and working. If employees don't get preventative care and yearly physicals (which they might not do if they don't have insurance), you could end up having employees out for long periods of time with serious illnesses.

There is a downside to offering health benefits, too. Some of the "cons" of offering health benefits are:

• The costs. Health care costs have risen enormously in recent years. As a result, not only are the costs draining valuable resources from many small employers, the uncertainty makes financial planning extremely difficult.
• The sometimes tense business of cost-sharing with employees. There is a way for a small employer to control costs and return certainty to the process: push any additional costs on to employees. While that may solve the financial problems, it creates many others. Even if you don't want to push all the costs on to employees, pushing some of the costs on to them is inevitable.
• The administrative hassles. Even though the insurance company from whom you purchase the health insurance will usually act as plan administrator, you will have to choose the insurer and then spend part of your time filling out forms, remitting premiums, and acting as intermediary between employee and insurer, among many other tasks.
• The potential liability. The potential for liability for selecting a health care provider that commits malpractice on an employee does exist. While this risk is small and should not be the driving reason behind a decision not to offer health insurance, you should be aware that several employers have been sued by their employees for what they contend was their employer's carelessness in selecting a provider.

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