What to Say When Home Care Caregiver Applicants Ask About Benefits
Eleven percent of home care workers carry no health insurance at all, and another 48 percent are on public coverage, so an applicant asking what you offer is usually asking a real question about her own household. Answer it in three parts. Name what she can use in her first month, say what each one costs her, and say who pays. A Section 125 wellness plan is what funds that answer, out of payroll tax you already remit.
The line every caregiver posting leaves blank
Open Indeed, search caregiver jobs in your own county, and read the first ten postings end to end. Most will name a wage range, flexible hours, paid training, a sign-on bonus. Then look for health coverage. It is usually absent, or it appears as a phrase like benefits available with nothing underneath it, which tells an applicant precisely as much as saying nothing would have told her.
Nobody is being lazy. An owner who cannot fund group health has nothing true to write on that line, so he writes what he can fund, and the posting ends up reading like the nine before it. The interview repeats the problem. She asks the question the posting dodged, and the answer is a pay rate.
So what do you actually say?
| What you say | What it costs her | Where she uses it |
|---|---|---|
| Generic prescriptions | $0 | Retail pharmacy counter |
| Brand-name prescriptions | Up to 80 percent off | The same counter |
| Urgent care, primary care and counseling, any hour | $0, no appointment | Her phone |
| Dental work | Up to 60 percent off, no copay or deductible | Nationwide network of dentists |
| Wellness and support groups | $0 | Scheduled virtual sessions |
Those five lines are the answer. Read them back in the interview exactly as written, because the specificity is the whole effect, and an applicant who has heard benefits available nine times hears the difference inside one sentence. Those are UnifyWell's published plan terms, itemized in what caregivers get.
Most of my applicants are part-time. Does that rule it out?
No. The thirty-hour line is a group carrier's underwriting rule, not tax law. A Section 125 election is open to W-2 employees regardless of how many hours they work, which matters because PHI puts 46 percent of home care workers under 35 hours a week. That is the half of your applicant pool group health was never going to reach.
Each option is priced in health benefits for part-time caregivers.
I priced benefits once and closed the spreadsheet
You priced a raise and a group plan. Both need new money. Two dollars an hour on a thirty-hour caregiver is $3,120 a year, $3,359 once the 7.65 percent employer FICA goes on top, and $134,360 across forty caregivers. At a 7 to 10 percent net margin that is the margin. A Section 125 wellness plan funds from a different line, the employer payroll tax you already remit on wages you are already paying.
The structure dates to 1978. Regulators objected to one specific double-dipping design rather than to the section itself. CBIZ wrote the CPA opinion and HitesmanLaw the legal assurance, both posted on the compliance page, and the longer version sits on the page asking whether a Section 125 wellness plan is legit.
Where this answer runs out
It is not insurance. No hospital network, no deductible, no major medical, and the dental piece is a discount at the chair rather than a claim that somebody else pays on her behalf. If she asks whether you cover a surgery, the answer is no, and saying so is what makes the rest credible. The other limit is yours. A caregiver has to activate the dashboard and keep a monthly wellness activity going, so an agency that hands out a login and walks away ends up with a plan nobody opens.
What would this look like at your agency?
Two inputs answer it. How many caregivers you run, and roughly what they earn. That is the whole ask, it stays small on purpose, and nobody is going to ask you for a document at any point in the process.
The estimator takes those two numbers and shows what your agency pays in employer payroll tax now, what turnover at the industry median costs you, and how much of the first could be redirected into caregiver benefits instead. Thirty seconds, no signup, and the recruiting hours it protects are counted in the caregiver turnover math.
UnifyWell's published example nets an employer roughly $640 per participating employee per year on a $44,000 earner, after the monthly administration fee. Caregiver wages sit below that. Across Home Care Benefits' own proposals the figure has landed between $300 and $900 per participating employee per year. That is a range, not a quote. Which of your own caregivers qualify, and what lands on each check, only your numbers answer. Your CPA is welcome to read the plan documents.
Answer the question with a number
Two inputs, thirty seconds, and a figure you can say out loud in the next interview.
Open the estimatorFree. No signup, and no documents to send.
Home Care Benefits is not an insurance company and does not sell insurance. A Section 125 wellness plan is not a substitute for major medical coverage. Benefit details are UnifyWell's own published plan terms and are subject to change. Savings figures are estimates, not guarantees, and depend on an agency's own payroll and participation. Nothing here is tax or legal advice. Have your CPA and benefits counsel review the plan documents before adopting any plan.
