If you’ve ever walked into a daycare in West Texas, you know what it feels like. You hear laughter from the playroom. You see tiny coats on tiny hooks. You smile at handprint art taped to the hallway wall.
Lisa runs one of those daycares in Midland.
She’s built a team of women who love those kids like their own. They clean up spills. They tie shoes. They comfort little ones when the day feels a bit too long. Lisa knows her staff is the heartbeat of the business. And she wants to take care of them. Not just with hugs and pizza, but with real employee benefits that matter to them.
But when she opened the annual benefits renewal for her group health plan, her stomach dropped. The monthly premiums are up again. And the coverage network? Still feels thin. The deductible is high enough that most of her staff won't ever meet it.
That’s when Lisa said, “There has to be a better way.”
So she called us. She’d heard Insurance For Texans helps small businesses find health coverage that actually fits their business and team. And when we sat down together, we didn’t start by pitching a plan. We started by asking the right questions. That made the difference for Lisa. And it can do the same for you.
If you're looking at health insurance for your team this year, here are five smart questions to ask the person helping you. We used these concepts to help Lisa make a better decision for her staff and her business.
Those active links can take you to specific answers to those questions, or you can use our FAQs at the bottom of the page for additional insight. Now back to Lisa's story.
Before calling us, Lisa’s first quote came from a big insurance company. It was fully insured, expensive, and didn’t include a single doctor near her daycare. And no one even mentioned that there might be different plan types.
That’s a red flag. A good advisor will show you options beyond just what the big names are selling.
Lisa learned about level-funded health care plans, which work great for small teams that don’t use their coverage much. She also got to see how an alternative health plan like catastrophic insurance could be paired with direct primary care to meet basic needs without huge monthly costs. And she even looked at private health plans that weren’t tied to the usual group structure.
None of that would’ve been on the table if she hadn’t talked to us.
When she realized how many options were out there, she felt like she finally had some control back. It wasn’t just about picking the least terrible plan anymore. It was about building something smart.
Lisa’s crew is a mix of young moms, seasoned teachers, and folks who just need regular, simple care.
What they didn’t need was a plan with a $7,500 deductible that nobody could actually afford to use.
That’s why the ability to shape a plan around their real needs was so important.
Instead of starting with a cookie-cutter quote, we started with questions.
One of her most appealing options is adding access to a direct primary care clinic. This gave her staff unlimited routine care without needing to file insurance claims every time they had a sore throat or needed bloodwork.
Lisa didn’t want a cheap plan. She wanted one that worked. And by starting with the people, not the price, she can get both by thinking differently than everyone else.
Dental and vision are the usual add-ons that everyone thinks about during open enrollment. They’re still important. But Lisa’s eyes lit up when she learned about other health insurance options that filled even more gaps.
Her team isn’t one-size-fits-all. Some of her staff were already on their spouse’s health plan and had no desire to change. Others didn’t want to play the additional health plan cost of traditional insurance, but still needed some kind of help for unexpected healthcare costs.
That’s where limited benefit plans come in.
Things like accident plans, critical illness coverage, and hospital indemnity health plans gave her team a way to protect themselves without adding big expenses to the daycare’s bottom line.
It also gave Lisa peace of mind. Everyone on her staff could be included in some form, even if they weren’t part of the main health insurance plan.
That kind of flexibility helped her show appreciation across the board. It allowed everyone who showed up and made a difference to be included.
One of the worst parts of Lisa’s old insurance plan was the health plan network. Her employees were going to have to drive 30 minutes just to find an in-network provider. On top of that, the out-of-pocket maximum costs were so high, nobody was going to actually use the plan unless they absolutely had to.
So Lisa asked a better question: “How do we make sure this thing actually works for my people?”
A smart health insurance broker who acts as an advisor will look past just the premium and help you understand how easy it is to get care, who’s in the network, and what real people will actually pay out of their pocket.
We mapped out a few network options side by side. Some plans had more choices, others had lower out-of-pocket costs. But all of them were built with her team in mind.
This idea made a big difference for Lisa.
She had previously talked to one employee benefits broker who said all the right things, but clearly didn’t understand the way a 15-person daycare runs in Midland.
It was all jargon, generic powerpoint decks, and preloaded health insurance plans that didn’t reflect her budget or her staff.
When she found us, the conversation changed.
We understood the dynamics of a small team. We talked about how to blend different kinds of health coverage. We showed her how health insurance could support retention and reduce turnover without killing cash flow.
And most importantly, we listened to her.
That’s what Lisa needed. Someone who knew the Texas market, who worked with other daycares, and who wasn’t trying to shoehorn her into some big-city corporate plan.
Lisa’s story isn’t rare. If you own a small business in Texas, you’ve probably felt boxed in by the “options” you’ve been given for group health insurance.
But here’s the truth: You don’t have to settle.
There are more ways than ever to build smart, affordable employee health benefits. It starts by asking the right questions about how your team gets medical care, views health care services, and thinks about prescription drug coverage. This can't happen if you aren't able to ask these five questions. It also helps to have someone in your corner who actually knows how to answer them.
At Insurance For Texans, this is what we do. We help business owners like Lisa every day. Whether you’re a daycare, a dentist, or a delivery company, our agents work to find the right insurance provider with the right coverage setup for your unique situation.
That includes you, the staff, and everything in between.
Click the button below to talk to someone who actually gets it, and get options that work for your team.