What Is Health Insurance Really Costing Your Business?
Health insurance costs can affect more than the premium. They can influence hiring, wages, employee benefits, profits, business investment, and even the prices a company charges.
McCarthy Stevenot Agency, Inc. is conducting the 2026–2027 Ohio Small Business Health Insurance Survey, original research on how smaller Ohio employers provide, pay for, and make decisions about health insurance.
If you own or help make health insurance decisions for an Ohio business with one to 50 people, including working owners, we would value your input.
The survey does not ask for your name, company name, email address, or telephone number. Responses will not be used for sales follow-up, and results will be reported only in aggregate.
Your response will help create a clearer picture of what Ohio small businesses are actually experiencing. Preliminary findings will be made publicly available in November 2026.
Take the Anonymous Survey
The survey should be completed by an owner or another person familiar with the company’s health insurance decisions. Please submit one response per business.
What We Are Trying to Learn
Small businesses can arrive at very different solutions to the same health insurance problem.
Some sponsor a traditional group health plan. Others use a MEWA, level-funded plan, ICHRA, QSEHRA, or another individual health insurance arrangement. Some provide no financial support because owners and employees already have coverage through spouses, Medicare, Medicaid, VA benefits, the individual Marketplace, or another source.
We are especially interested in the experiences of businesses with fewer than 10 people. These employers are an important part of Ohio’s business community but are not always clearly represented in major employer health insurance studies.
The survey asks questions such as:
- How many Ohio small businesses financially support health insurance?
- How much of employee and dependent premiums do employers generally pay?
- How large are small-business health insurance renewal increases, and what changes do employers make when costs rise?
- How do health insurance costs affect profits, wages, hiring, benefits, investment, and prices?
- Why do some businesses use individual reimbursement arrangements while others provide no health insurance support?
- How important is health insurance when recruiting or retaining employees?
- What health insurance challenges are Ohio small businesses facing right now?
Why Participation Matters
The health insurance decisions facing a business with three people can be very different from those facing a company with 30 or 300.
A new business may be deciding whether it can establish coverage at all. Another company may have employees covered through spouses or government programs and little immediate demand for an employer plan. An established employer may be dealing with a large renewal increase, employee affordability, participation requirements, or difficult decisions about how much cost the business can continue to absorb.
The Ohio Small Business Health Insurance Survey is intended to document those decisions and make the findings publicly available.
Our goal is to build an annual benchmark that becomes more useful as participation grows and year-over-year comparisons become possible.
Survey Timing and Privacy
The 2026–2027 Ohio Small Business Health Insurance Survey will remain open through January 31, 2027.
Preliminary findings will be published in November 2026.
The full 2027 Ohio Small Business Health Insurance Report will be published in March 2027.
The survey does not ask for your name, company name, email address, or telephone number. Responses will not be used for sales follow-up, and results will be reported only in aggregate.
Take the Anonymous Survey
Help Make the Results More Useful
The value of this research depends on hearing from businesses of different sizes, industries, and regions across Ohio.
If you know another Ohio small business owner or decision-maker who may be willing to participate, please share the survey.
The more businesses represented, the more useful the findings can become for Ohio employers, business organizations, journalists, advisers, and others trying to understand the small-business health insurance market.
Share the Survey:
Organizations and Business Groups
Chambers of commerce, professional associations, trade groups, accounting firms, payroll organizations, economic-development groups, and other organizations serving Ohio small businesses are welcome to share the survey with their members and audiences.
We can provide a unique sharing link for participating organizations so we can understand where responses originated while keeping individual survey responses anonymous.
Organizations interested in helping broaden participation may use the materials below.
Survey Media Kit
Survey Description
2026–2027 Ohio Small Business Health Insurance Survey
McCarthy Stevenot Agency, Inc. is conducting original research on how Ohio businesses with one to 50 people provide, pay for, and make decisions about health insurance.
The survey will remain open through January 31, 2027. Preliminary findings will be published in November 2026, with the full 2027 Ohio Small Business Health Insurance Report following in March 2027.
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Survey Link
https://www.mccarthystevenot.com/ohio-small-business-health-insurance-survey/
About the Research
The Ohio Small Business Health Insurance Survey is conducted by McCarthy Stevenot Agency, Inc., an independent Ohio insurance agency serving small employers.
The research is being conducted independently and is not a sales campaign. Participating organizations may help distribute the survey, but survey questions, analysis, and published findings remain under the direction of McCarthy Stevenot Agency.
As the project develops, this page will become the permanent home for:
- Preliminary findings
- The annual Ohio Small Business Health Insurance Report
- Methodology and sample information
- Charts and downloadable data
- Regional and employer-size findings when response levels support them
- Future annual editions of the survey