The mandate packaged into the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act required a wider range of employers to offer health insurance coverage, and although many smaller employers satisfied that requirement by signing up for a plan on the Small Business Health Options Program Marketplace, others have been seeking different ways to provide employees with health insurance.

One variation of a self-funded insurance plan, a multiple-employer welfare arrangement, is a potential solution for employers who'd prefer to seek options outside of the government-run health insurance exchanges, and Dawn Wright, vice president of insurance services at QualCare, and who's been working with MEWAs for more than a dozen years.

"Typically, you have a group of employers who are looking for alternatives to their health insurance options," Wright explains. "These employers want to form a self-funded MEWA as an alternative to the fully insured market or going self-insured on their own, individually. The benefit of the MEWA is that you're taking a group of employers and joining them together to share in the overall claims risk."