ICHRA vs. group health insurance.
A group plan buys one compromise for everyone and reprices you every year. An ICHRA fixes your budget and hands the choice to each employee. Here is the comparison in plain terms — including the cases where keeping your group plan is the right answer.
Dimension by dimension.
Who picks the plan
The company picks one plan (maybe two) for everyone, once a year.
Each employee picks their own plan from every plan filed in their county.
What renewal looks like
A letter with a new number, driven partly by your own group's claims year.
Your allowance is your allowance — it moves only when you decide.
Networks and doctors
One network; employees whose doctors sit outside it are out of luck.
Each person can pick the plan whose network has their doctors.
Risk on your books
Your group's health drives your price; one bad year follows you.
Employees buy community-rated individual plans; your team's claims never reprice you.
Tax treatment
Premiums are pre-tax for employer and employee.
Reimbursements are tax-free to employees and deductible to you — same tax result, without the group contract.
Administration
Open enrollment, the renewal negotiation, COBRA — the company's problem.
The notice, classes, opt-outs, and substantiated reimbursements — structured, and what a platform automates.
Left: the group plan · Right: the ICHRA
When the group plan wins.
The comparison runs on your real bill and your real team — and if the answer is “keep what you have,” that's the answer you get.
Your current group renewal is genuinely cheap for the coverage — some experience-rated groups do come out ahead. The comparison is arithmetic, not ideology.
Your county's individual market is thin: few carriers, narrow networks. The audit shows this before you commit to anything.
Your team expects a specific rich plan design (say, a particular national PPO) that the local individual market doesn't file an equivalent for.
The comparison questions owners ask.
Is an ICHRA cheaper than a group plan?
Often, not always. Group single coverage averages $9,325 a year (KFF 2025 survey), and our audits project savings around $5,000 per employee per year — a labeled projection, not a guarantee. The honest answer comes from pricing your actual team against the plans actually filed where they live, which is what the free audit does.
Do employees lose anything by moving off the group plan?
They trade one company-chosen plan for a choice among every plan filed in their county. Most gain network fit and plan fit; an employee who loved the exact group plan may not find an identical design. That trade should be visible before you switch — not discovered after.
Can we keep the group plan for some employees and offer an ICHRA to others?
Yes, by employee class — for example, one arrangement for full-time and another for part-time — but never both options to the same class, and some classes carry minimum-size rules when a group plan runs alongside.
Does an ICHRA satisfy the employer mandate the way a group plan does?
Larger employers can generally meet their federal coverage obligations with an ICHRA that qualifies as affordable under IRS proposed rules, which employers may currently rely on. Smaller companies aren't subject to the mandate either way.
What happens at renewal time under an ICHRA?
Nothing, unless you want it to. There is no group contract to renew — employees re-shop during Open Enrollment with their allowance, and you change the allowance only when you choose.
Run the comparison on your real bill.
Insurf, Inc. is not a licensed insurance agency, does not sell insurance, and receives no commissions; enrollment applications are submitted by an individually licensed insurance producer. This page is an educational comparison — not an offer of coverage, not a recommendation to buy or drop any plan, and not financial, tax, legal, medical, coverage, or insurance advice. Projections are labeled and are not guarantees.