The franchise system gives you brand, training and a playbook. But providing meaningful health benefits to caregivers earning $16 to $22 an hour can still be difficult. That is the gap this fills.
ComForCare owners face many of the same staffing and margin pressures, which makes the benefits math remarkably similar from one location to another.
Consider a 40-caregiver location with a mostly part-time team. A $2 an hour raise across the roster can cost roughly $134,360 a year. Traditional group health can also add significant new costs. For an agency operating on tight margins, either option can be difficult to absorb.
So the benefits conversation often ends at the quote, while owners are still trying to recruit and retain caregivers in an industry with persistently high turnover.
Turnover does not appear on a P&L, which is exactly why it never gets costed. It shows up as advertising, as overtime covering the gap, as your scheduler's afternoon, and as a client who met four caregivers in six weeks and started calling around.
Approximate cost to replace one caregiver, built from the Center for American Progress finding that replacing a sub-$30,000 employee costs about 16 percent of annual salary, applied to the BLS median wage of $16.78 an hour.
Median caregiver turnover in 2025, flat for a second year, per Activated Insights benchmarking reported by HHAeXchange.
Estimated annual turnover cost for a 40-caregiver location using the assumptions above.
These are constructions from public sources, clearly labeled, not a published home care figure. There is no current sourceable replacement-cost number for this industry, so we built one transparently instead of borrowing one of the unattributed figures floating around.
Fair question, and the comparison above invites it. But a raise and a benefits strategy solve the problem in very different ways.
A raise goes across the roster, including to caregivers who may not have been considering leaving. And while higher pay may help retention, it does not eliminate turnover. So the estimated turnover cost above should not be treated as money a raise would automatically recover.
The Section 125 route works differently because the payroll tax savings can help offset the cost of the benefits. Here is how the structure works, start to finish.
"Most of my caregivers are part-time. They would not qualify."
Many traditional group health plans use a 30-hour eligibility threshold, so this is a reasonable thing to assume. But Section 125 participation is not based on that same group-health threshold.
Part-time W-2 caregivers may be eligible to participate. Individual results vary based on factors such as wages, filing status and pay schedule. In an industry with so many part-time caregivers, that distinction matters.
Detail on that is in the caregiver benefits breakdown, which prices seven common benefits per caregiver per year.
Headcount, average hours and pay range. Enough to tell you quickly whether it makes sense to run an analysis for your location.
Free, usually back in a day or two, with an estimate of who qualifies and the potential savings for your agency.
CBIZ compliance opinion and HitesmanLaw legal assurance, both before you sign anything.
Caregiver communication, enrollment meetings and questions. Roughly 95 percent of the work is theirs.
Headcount, average hours and average wage. The estimator shows what you currently pay in employer payroll taxes, what turnover may be costing you, and the potential payroll tax savings a Section 125 wellness plan could create.
Open the estimatorHome Care Benefits provides marketing and enrollment support and does not provide legal, tax, accounting or health advice. The Unify Wellness Plan is administered by UnifyWell. Savings figures in any proposal are estimates based on the payroll information provided and are not guaranteed. Federal and state tax laws change. Consult your own CPA or attorney before enrolling.