When you set up a plan, most insurance companies require that you list your new hire waiting period on the Employer Application before they approve your policy. When the employees enroll, the insurance companies use the waiting period you selected and the date of hire of the employee to determine when the employee will be enrolled on the plan. There are some companies, like Kaiser, that don’t keep track of the waiting period for you and instead require that the employee’s enrollment date be listed on the employee’s enrollment application.
However, all insurance companies, in compliance with the Affordable Care ACT (ACA) require that you don’t apply a waiting period longer than 90 days. The waiting period must be the same for all employees although there are some exceptions to this.
Benefits Cafe makes it simple. We will send you an Information Sheet (PDF) that includes your company’s new hire waiting period. When you have a new hire, we will include their effective date on the worksheet (PDF) we send you with their plan options.
If your company has more than 10 employees enrolled, we will set up an online enrollment portal at no cost to you. When you add a new employee onto the portal and add their date of hire, the system will determine their effective date based on your company’s new hire waiting period. When the employees go through the enrollment process online, they will have access to this information.