Questions Colorado business owners ask us about group coverage

No. The federal requirement to offer coverage, and the penalty that comes with it, starts at 50 full-time-equivalent employees. Under that line, a health plan is a choice you make to hire and keep people, not a rule you have to meet.

Colorado doesn’t add a requirement of its own. What it does add, through its paid leave program, is a payroll premium that applies whether or not you offer insurance.

What changes for employers in 2027

Yes, as long as that employee isn’t an owner or an owner’s spouse. Colorado leaves owners, their spouses and partners out of who counts as an eligible employee, so a company made up only of owners can’t buy a group health plan.

One employee on payroll who isn’t an owner is enough. If only one person enrolls, the carrier will ask for wage records to show the business has employees on the books.

If it really is just you, or you and your spouse, individual coverage is the route, and that’s something we do every day.

Coverage when you are self-employed

Usually everyone who works a regular full-time schedule for you, and the plan you choose writes the definition down. You set it once, and it has to apply the same way to everyone in the same kind of job.

Part-time employees can be offered coverage too if the carrier allows it. People who already have coverage elsewhere, through a spouse’s job for example, can usually decline without counting against you.

Up to 90 days. Federal law and Colorado law both cap a waiting period there.

Most small employers choose the first of the month after a month or two of work, so payroll deductions and the carrier’s billing start on the same date.

Not in Colorado law. The state sets neither, so each carrier sets its own, and across the carriers selling small group here the enrollment rules run from no minimum at all to most of your eligible employees.

People who decline because they’re covered somewhere else usually don’t count against you. And once a year, from November 15 to December 15, a business that can’t meet a carrier’s rules can still start a plan on January 1.

The November window

It’s a month, November 15 to December 15 every year, when a small business can start a group plan on January 1 without meeting the carrier’s usual enrollment or contribution rules. Federal rules don’t let a carrier hold a group to those rules during that month.

It exists for the company with two of five people already covered through a spouse, or the owner who can’t pay half yet. The application has to be in by the day the window closes; some carriers take the rest of the paperwork into late December, but not the application. Start in October or early November rather than the second week of December.

Since January 1, 2026, small group coverage in Colorado is for employers with 1 to 50 employees. Companies of 51 to 100 employees used to be small group too.

A company with more than 50 employees that already had a small group plan can keep it for up to 5 years. If it moves to a large group plan during those years, it can’t switch back.

The 2027 market, in full

Often, yes, and at a smaller size than most owners expect. You pay a fixed amount each month, the carrier pays claims out of it, and if claims come in low, part of the difference can come back to you at the end of the year.

The catch for a small company is underwriting. Most carriers ask every enrollee to answer health questions first, so one person’s health can change the price or whether there’s an offer at all. When it makes sense, we quote it beside a regular plan so you can see both.

It depends on your employees’ ages and the plan you choose, so nobody can give you a real number before seeing a list of your people.

What we can tell you is the direction. The Colorado Division of Insurance approved an average change of 14% for small group plans statewide for 2027, and the averages for Larimer, Weld and Boulder counties are on our market page.

2027 changes by county

It’s a plan Colorado designs and every small group carrier has to sell, at bronze, silver and gold, wherever it sells anything else. The state writes the deductible and copays; the carrier brings the network and sets the price.

For you it means one easy comparison: two Colorado Option plans at the same metal level cost your employees the same at the doctor, so you’re choosing on network and premium.

The Colorado Option in 2027

There is, and in Colorado it’s narrow. The federal credit only applies to coverage bought through a small business marketplace, and Connect for Health Colorado doesn’t run one; it sends owners straight to a carrier instead.

You also need fewer than 25 full-time-equivalent employees, average wages under the IRS limit, and you can claim it for 2 years in a row. Ask your tax preparer before the credit decides your carrier for you.

Not federal COBRA, which starts at 20 employees. Colorado’s own continuation rule applies to your plan at any size.

An employee who has been on the plan for 6 months can keep it for up to 18 months after leaving, paying the premium themselves. Your part is the written notice within ten days of the person leaving, and passing their monthly payment on to the carrier.

It depends on your headcount, your budget and how much choice your people want. A group plan is one set of plans everyone chooses among, with your contribution toward it.

A CHOICE arrangement, still widely called an ICHRA, gives each employee a set monthly amount toward an individual plan they pick. A QSEHRA does the same for employers under 50, with a yearly cap: $6,450 for single coverage and $13,100 for family in 2026.

We work with all of them, so we don’t need you to pick one before we talk.

The three side by side

Yes, by class of job, not by person. Full-time and part-time, salaried and hourly, or one location and another can be treated differently, as long as everyone in the same class gets the same offer.

What you can’t do is draw a class around somebody’s health or claims. Tell us what you’d like to do and we’ll tell you whether the carrier will write it.

The federal employer mandate. You have to offer full-time employees coverage that’s affordable, which for plan years starting in 2027 means the employee’s share of single coverage is no more than 10.22% of their household income.

Miss it and the penalty for 2027 is $3,780 a year for each full-time employee after the first 30 if you offer nothing and any full-time employee gets a premium tax credit, or $5,670 for each employee who goes without affordable coverage from you and gets a tax credit instead.

They can stay on your plan, and which coverage pays first depends on your size. With 20 or more employees, your group plan pays first and Medicare second, so many people put off parts of Medicare while they keep working.

Under 20 employees, Medicare pays first. An employee who skips part of it can find the group plan paying as if they had it, and the gap is theirs. Have them call us before they decide; getting the order wrong costs real money.

Still working at 65

Yes. Dental, vision, life and disability plans are sold on their own, and most carriers will write an employer-paid plan for a company with only a couple of people enrolled.

It’s a common first step for a business that isn’t ready to pay for health coverage, and it costs a fraction of it.

Dental and vision for a small business

Who pays. On an employer-paid plan you cover all or part of the premium. On a voluntary plan your employees pay the whole premium through payroll, and you offer the group price and the paperwork.

Voluntary plans usually need more people to sign up before a carrier will write them, and some carriers want a share of eligible employees enrolled. Employer-paid plans start smaller.

Up to $50,000 of coverage, yes. Above that, the cost of the extra coverage counts as taxable income to the employee, and it shows up on their W-2.

That’s why so many employer-paid life plans stop at that amount, with more available for employees to buy themselves.

Life and disability coverage

They do different jobs. FAMLI is Colorado’s paid family and medical leave program, funded by a premium of 0.86% of wages for 2027, up to half of it from the employee. Employers with fewer than 10 employees send in only the employee half.

Short-term and long-term disability insurance are private plans that replace part of someone’s pay when they can’t work because of their own illness or injury. Where both apply, Colorado law says an employer may require FAMLI leave to run at the same time as a short-term disability policy, and count the FAMLI pay and weeks against what the policy still owes, if it tells employees in writing first. We’ll go through how your policy handles it.

Nothing directly. The carrier pays us a commission that’s already in the premium, and the premium is the same whether you use us, another broker, or no broker at all.

Before you appoint us on a health, dental or vision plan, we tell you in writing what we expect to be paid. Federal law requires that disclosure, and we’d give it to you anyway.

It tells a carrier who your broker is. It changes nothing about your plan, your premium, your employees’ cards or your renewal date.

You sign one letter for each carrier, and the carrier usually makes the change at the start of the next month. You don’t need to give the carrier a reason.

Broker of record letters

Two to three months, if you can. Your renewal letter usually lands about two months before the date, and that’s the right moment to compare it against the rest of the market.

Later still works. It just leaves less time to collect your employee list, get quotes back and give your people notice of any change.

Your renewal, step by step

Yes. A small business can start a new group plan in any month, so you don’t have to wait for your renewal.

The cost to watch is your employees’ deductibles. They usually start over with the new plan, so a switch late in the plan year can throw away what people have already paid toward them. We’ll tell you when waiting is cheaper.

Yes. The PEO’s health plan belongs to the PEO, so your own plan has to start the day theirs ends, with no gap for your employees.

Check the notice period in your PEO contract first, then give us about two months. That covers collecting your employee list, quotes, enrollment and the carrier’s paperwork.

A census is a list of your employees, one line each, that carriers use to price a group plan: dates of birth, ZIP codes, and who would enroll and at what level.

We never ask for Social Security numbers, employee ID numbers or anybody’s health information, and names are optional. If you’d rather not send a file at all, bring the list to the call.

What a census needs

No. We do not sell your information. That goes for your company’s details and for every line of an employee list. We use them to quote and place your coverage, and for nothing else.

Tell us to stop contacting you and we stop. Once is enough.

Our privacy policy

Your headcount, the date your current plan renews if you have one, and roughly what you want to spend. That’s enough for a first conversation.

Your renewal letter and an employee list help later, but you don’t need either to start.

Tell us about your business