Lansing’s employer base does not look like the rest of Michigan. State government and Michigan State University anchor an unusually credentialed workforce; the auto plants in Delta Township and on Grand River sit alongside a dense insurance and financial services sector; and a cluster of hospital systems competes hard for clinical staff across the tri-county area.
What that means practically: employees in this market compare benefits carefully, because many of them have friends or spouses working somewhere with a very rich public-sector or university plan. A mid-market employer in Lansing is not benchmarking against the national average. It is benchmarking against MSU.
CFH Insurance Consultants is an independent employee benefits brokerage. We are licensed insurance brokers. We place and manage group health, dental, vision, life and disability coverage for Michigan employers, and we handle the compliance that comes with it. We have been doing it since 1995.
What we do for Lansing employers
- Market your plan to every carrier that writes in the mid-Michigan region, every year
- Model fully insured, level-funded and self-funded options against your actual census
- Design contribution strategy that hits your budget without gutting the plan
- Own the compliance calendar — 5500s, ACA reporting, COBRA notices, plan documents
- Advocate on claims and enrollment problems so your HR team is not on hold
Carrier landscape in the Lansing market
Network strength is regional, and Lansing has real local depth that a downstate-only broker can miss.
Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan has the broadest statewide network and is usually the baseline quote. Priority Health competes aggressively across mid-Michigan and often wins on price for younger groups. McLaren Health Plan has meaningful leverage in the Lansing area given McLaren Greater Lansing. Physicians Health Plan, headquartered in Lansing itself, has long-standing relationships with mid-Michigan providers and is worth quoting for groups whose employees are concentrated in Ingham, Eaton and Clinton counties.
The practical point is that a Lansing employer whose staff all use one hospital system may get a materially better rate from the plan aligned with that system — and will never find out unless someone actually quotes it. Accepting a renewal without going to market is where most of the avoidable cost sits.
Group health plan design for mid-Michigan employers
Level-funded plans
For a healthy group between roughly 10 and 150 employees, level funding is usually the first alternative we model. You pay a fixed monthly amount covering expected claims, administration and stop-loss protection. If claims come in under projection, a share of the surplus returns to you at year end. If they run high, the stop-loss layer caps your exposure at a number you knew in advance.
Small fully insured groups in Michigan are community-rated, which means a genuinely healthy group is subsidizing sicker groups in the same pool. Level funding is how a good risk profile turns into money. It is not right for every group — an employer with several ongoing high-cost claims is usually better off fully insured — and that determination requires looking at your census, not a rule of thumb.
Fully insured
Fixed premium, carrier takes the risk, no year-end reconciliation. Simplest to administer and the right answer more often than the level-funding pitch suggests, particularly for small groups with known claims or for employers who cannot tolerate any variability.
Self-funding
Generally appropriate above roughly 100 to 150 employees. Maximum control, maximum volatility, and it requires an employer willing to look at claims data and act on it.
Executive carve-outs and MERPs
A Medical Expense Reimbursement Plan lets you reimburse out-of-pocket costs for a defined executive class beyond what the base plan covers. It is a targeted retention tool for leadership without moving the whole plan up a tier. Non-discrimination rules apply and vary by funding type, so the design has to be done deliberately.
The rest of the package
Dental. Typically 100% preventive, 70–80% basic, 50% major, against a $1,000–$2,000 annual maximum. Frequently offered voluntary — the employee pays through payroll deduction and still beats individual pricing.
Vision. A few dollars per employee per month. Annual exam plus a frames or contacts allowance. Employees use it every year, which means they notice it every year.
Group life and AD&D. Usually employer-paid at a flat amount or one to two times salary, issued without medical underwriting up to a guaranteed issue limit. Remember that employer-paid coverage above $50,000 creates imputed income that has to run through payroll.
Short-term and long-term disability. Michigan has no state disability program, which makes employer-sponsored STD more consequential here than in states that do. STD typically replaces around 60% of income for 12 to 26 weeks; LTD picks up after that. Watch the tax treatment: employer-paid premium means taxable benefits, employee-paid after-tax premium means tax-free benefits. For a well-paid group, having employees pay the LTD premium is often the better outcome despite looking less generous.
HSAs, FSAs and HRAs. Pre-tax accounts that sit alongside the plan and change its economics. Employer HSA contributions are the standard way to make a higher deductible palatable. ICHRA is worth modeling for employers with staff spread across regions where no single network serves everyone well.
Mental health. Parity requirements mean your medical plan must treat behavioral health on par with physical health, but network adequacy varies widely and is a legitimate question to put to carriers during bidding. Employee assistance programs are inexpensive and, in our experience, undersold.
Compliance for Lansing employers
- ERISA — written plan document, Summary Plan Description distributed to participants, Form 5500 for plans with 100 or more participants. Late filings accrue penalties per day.
- ACA employer mandate — at 50 or more full-time-equivalent employees you are an Applicable Large Employer and must offer affordable, minimum-value coverage and report on Forms 1094-C and 1095-C. The FTE calculation aggregates part-time hours and catches employers by surprise.
- COBRA — at 20 or more employees, continuation coverage with notices on a strict timetable.
- Section 125 — pre-tax payroll deductions require an adopted cafeteria plan document. Many employers deduct pre-tax without ever having one.
- Michigan Earned Sick Time Act — ESTA changed accrual and usage rules for most Michigan employers and interacts with benefits eligibility, particularly for variable-hour staff. If you have not reviewed eligibility against ESTA, that is worth doing.
None of this is exotic. It is routine when someone owns it and expensive when nobody does.
What about business liability, property and workers’ compensation?
We do not write those. CFH is a benefits-only brokerage.
You do need them — Michigan requires workers’ compensation coverage for most employers with employees — and you should have a property and casualty broker for that side. We are glad to coordinate with yours. The place the two genuinely touch is disability: workers’ compensation covers work-related injury, short-term disability covers everything else, and employers who have not thought about the boundary either leave a gap or pay twice for the same lost month.
Frequently asked questions
Do I have to offer health insurance to my Lansing employees? Not below 50 full-time-equivalent employees. At 50 or more, the ACA employer mandate applies.
What will group health cost my business? It depends on your census, region, plan design and funding model, so any number quoted before seeing your employee list is a guess. What we can say is that the spread between the best and worst quote for the same group is routinely wide enough to justify bidding it properly every year.
How is a broker paid? By the carrier, as commission built into the premium — not by you directly. That is exactly why you should ask a broker how many carriers they quoted last year. If the answer is one, you are paying for a renewal, not a market.
Can we offer different benefits to different groups of employees? Within limits. Classes based on legitimate employment criteria — full-time versus part-time, salaried versus hourly, location — are permissible, but they must be applied consistently and non-discrimination rules apply, particularly for self-funded arrangements.
We are a small employer. Are we too small for you? No. Much of our work is with employers between 10 and 150 employees, which is where plan design and carrier competition make the biggest proportional difference.
Talk to a benefits broker who knows mid-Michigan
We will review your current plan, your renewal and your compliance posture, and tell you plainly whether you are being served well. If you are, we will say so.
Sunny Connolly
Sr. Partner & Head of Growth and Partnerships
CFH Insurance Consultants
41000 Woodward Avenue, Suite 350 East, Bloomfield Hills, MI 48304
Call 248.370.8853 or book a 30-minute review.
