I hear this from small business owners across Volusia County and Central Florida almost every week: “I want to offer my employees health insurance. I just don’t think I can afford it right now.” If that’s you, I want to start by saying this clearly — you’re not failing your team, and you’re not alone. A lot of the businesses I work with, especially startups, seasonal operations, and businesses that just came through a rough stretch, are in exactly this position. The good news is that “can’t afford a full group plan” and “can’t do anything at all” are two very different situations, and there’s usually a middle path.
You Don’t Have to Go All In on Day One
One of the biggest misconceptions I run into is that offering health insurance means covering 100% of premiums for every employee and their families. It doesn’t. You can start by contributing toward just the employee’s own premium — not dependents — and even a partial contribution, say 50% of the employee-only premium, is enough to get your business into the small-group market in Florida. That’s a real, meaningful benefit, and it’s often far more affordable than owners assume once you see an actual quote instead of guessing at the cost.
QSEHRA: Built for Businesses Exactly Like Yours
If you have fewer than 50 employees and don’t currently offer a group health plan, a Qualified Small Employer HRA (QSEHRA) is worth a serious look. Here’s how it works in plain terms:
- You set a monthly reimbursement amount — there’s no minimum contribution required, so you can start small.
- Employees use that money tax-free to pay for their own individual marketplace health insurance premiums and qualifying medical expenses.
- For 2026, the IRS caps reimbursements at $6,450 per year for self-only employees and $13,100 per year for employees with family coverage, per PeopleKeep’s guide to the 2026 QSEHRA limits.
- You don’t have to hit the cap. Many small employers start with a modest monthly allowance, sometimes just a few hundred dollars, and increase it as the business grows.
The appeal for a budget-conscious business is that you control the exact dollar amount going out the door every month, with no surprise premium increases from a group carrier to manage.
ICHRA: Even More Flexibility
An Individual Coverage HRA (ICHRA) works similarly to a QSEHRA but with no company-size restriction and, importantly, no IRS dollar cap on contributions. You decide the reimbursement amount that fits your budget, and you can set different amounts for different classes of employees — full-time versus part-time, or seasonal staff versus year-round staff, for example. That’s particularly useful for Florida businesses with a seasonal rhythm, like a landscaping company that ramps up in spring or a tourism-adjacent business around Orlando that staffs up for peak season. You can offer a meaningful reimbursement to your core year-round team and a smaller one to seasonal staff, all within the same structure.
Stipends: Simple, But Know the Tradeoff
Some employers choose to just add a taxable stipend to an employee’s paycheck earmarked for health coverage. It’s the simplest option to administer — no HRA paperwork, no plan document — but it’s also the least tax-efficient. Because it’s taxable income, both you and the employee lose some of that value to payroll taxes and income tax that an HRA structure would have avoided. It can be a reasonable stopgap, but if you’re already looking at the numbers closely, a QSEHRA typically stretches your dollars further.
If You Truly Can’t Contribute Anything Yet
If your business genuinely cannot put a dollar toward health benefits this year, that’s okay too — but don’t leave your employees in the dark. Point them toward the ACA marketplace at healthcare.gov, where many of them may qualify for meaningful premium subsidies based on income, sometimes bringing a solid plan down to a very low monthly cost. This is exactly the kind of thing a broker can help with directly, and it costs your employees nothing. I regularly sit down with employees of small Florida businesses — whether their employer offers a group plan or not — to walk through their options on the marketplace, compare plans from carriers like Florida Blue, Molina, Oscar, and Ambetter, and make sure they’re not leaving subsidy money on the table.
Revisit This Every Year
What’s unaffordable for your business today might not be unaffordable next year. Revenue changes, headcount changes, and the HRA and group insurance landscape shifts too, sometimes in your favor. I make it a habit to check back in annually with the small business owners I work with, because a business that couldn’t justify a group plan two years ago is often in a completely different position now — and sometimes a well-structured ICHRA or QSEHRA turns out to be more affordable than the group coverage they thought they couldn’t touch in the first place.
The Bottom Line
There’s no single right answer here, and there shouldn’t be pressure to do more than your business can realistically sustain. The goal is to find the structure — whether that’s employee-only coverage, a QSEHRA, an ICHRA, a stipend, or simply pointing your team to the marketplace — that fits where your business actually is right now, not where you wish it were.
If you want to talk through your specific numbers with no pressure and no obligation, Choice Health Insurance Brokers is here to help. Michael McAllister works with small businesses throughout DeLand and Central Florida to find a realistic path forward, whatever your budget looks like today.