• Learn about group health insurance in Illinois before you buy it.illinois outline image by Kim Jones from Fotolia.com
  
  Group health insurance is an affordable way to purchase health insurance when compared to individual, private, insurance offerings. Group health insurance in Illinois, for example, allows employees to purchase health insurance through their employer.
  
  While this is no different from any other state, there are laws in Illinois that control how group health insurance is sold.
  
  

Minimum Enrollment

• Health insurance companies can specify minimum enrollment requirements for policies sold in Illinois. This means that if an employer does not have a required minimum amount of employees enrolled in the health insurance plan, then the health insurance company can terminate the policy.
  
  

Employer Contributions

• A health insurance company can enforce employer contributions to health insurance policies for employees. If the insurance company mandates their policy requires employer contributions and the employer does not meet the requirement, then the policy can be rescinded.
  
  

Policy Cancellation

• Health insurance policies in Illinois cannot be canceled because an employee becomes sick. This is beneficial to employers because, otherwise, one employee could jeopardize the entire group's health insurance.
  
  

Self-Employed Insurance

• If you are self-employed, you cannot purchase health insurance at the normal group discounted rate. Instead, you must purchase an individual policy. However, if you purchase an individual policy as a self-employed individual, in most cases, you can deduct up to 90 percent of the premiums from your income taxes.