If you are starting out a business in Arizona and intend to employ people, it makes sense to thoroughly study the laws governing Arizona group insurance. You need to understand state and federal laws as well as individual regulations of health insurance companies in order to provide the best care you can for your employees while also protecting yourself as the employer.

There are some basic elements of Arizona group insurance. If you have a small business in Arizona (if you employ only two to fifty employees during one calendar year), you are not required to provide group health insurance to your employees. But sometimes you need to do this as an added incentive to your hard workers and potential recruits. If you decide to offer group insurance, you should keep two considerations in mind: health insurance eligibility requirements and premium payments.

You should understand health insurance eligibility requirements. As the employer, you are in charge of establishing the eligibility of your employees for health insurance. Most insurance companies offer you guaranteed issue deals that let you and your employees skip medical underwriting.

However, you still have the power to decide who among your employees are eligible for group insurance and who are not. Do you only give group health insurance to full-time employees, or do you include part-time workers? What constitutes full-time and part-time work? How long should an employee have been working for you before he or she qualifies for group insurance? Do you also cover his or her dependents; and if so, to what degree?

You should also consider the premium payments. In Arizona, you will typically be required to shoulder at least 50% of your employees' portions of the premiums – this is the average percentage that insurance companies impose as an employer's minimum contribution towards his or her employees' health insurance payments. You may opt to cover all of your employees' premiums; if you do so, you will not be required to contribute anything to their dependents' plans.