The employees of small businesses seeking to retire retirement also face a hefty price tag for healthcare options in the next step of their lives. What are the best options for those small business retirees?

Yahoo Finance Health Reporter Anjalee Khemlani comes on as part of this week's Small Business, Big Opportunities special coverage, breaking down how retiring employees of a small business can approach healthcare expenses, with helpful insight from her conversation with Employee Benefits Research Institute Director of the Health Research and Education Program Paul Fronstin.

Catch more of Yahoo Finance's special Small Business: Big Opportunities coverage this week, or watch this full episode.

This post was written by Nicholas Jacobino

Video Transcript

For small business employees on retirement, there is a hefty price tag to consider when it comes to health care expenses.So what are the options for health savings in the world of small business here with more as part of Yahoo Finance's small business, big opportunities week, we have our very own Angeli Kamlani to break it down for us.An That's right, Josh, unfortunately, for small business, this employees, the road to retirement is not so easy.We know that of course, with large employers, you have a lot set up for you in a lot of offerings, small businesses on the other hand, do have more avenues that are related to what the government has set up.So for example, think about when you get your health benefits that a large number of small employers are looking to the ac A for that in the marketplace and offering that rather than going through the process of a plan design now that spills over into retirement with companies not necessarily being able to set up much.In fact, the price tag would surprise you.I spoke to Paul Franson over at er I and here is what he had to say when you go into a Medicare Advantage plan, you, you know, there, there's a lot of different things to juggle.Medicare doesn't cover everything.And Medicare Advantage typically doesn't cover everything.So there may be per day co-pays.If you go into the hospital, there may be coinsurance, there may be co-pays or coinsurance for medications.Uh and there may be a limited network which could be an HMO, that's, that's local to where you live or a national PPO uh that gives you more choices.So those are the things you need to weigh and you need to weigh.If you're, if you're looking for a zero premium Medicare Advantage plan, what does that mean for your potential out of pocket spending when you need medical services?And of course, we know that when you get to retirement, you're getting on that Medicare plan, but that doesn't cover everything and neither does the private market Medicare advantage.And in addition to all that Medicare advantage is now looking at shifts in what the plan designs offer.We've seen the pressure coming down from Medicare changing the reimbursement rates that these companies get.And as result insurers are changing what their offerings are, which could mean few offerings in the coming future.Now, when you take a look at all of that, Paul had a little bit of insight into what has changed that could help retire and here's what he had to say.We have found depending upon how long you live and how much health care you use.Uh, a married couple at 865 could need more than $400,000 in savings.Just to cover those expenses.A lot more workers have health savings accounts than in the past.Uh It's something that there's a lot of, there's a lot of flexibility around how you could use an HS A.Uh There's a triple tax advantage which means the contributions going in the build up of the account either through interest or capital gains.And the distributions for qualified medical expenses are all uh tax free, something to consider.But there's also a trade off there.If you want to use an HS A to save money for health care and retirement, it means that in order to make contributions, you have to have a high deductible health plan.And if you're using any medical services, you need to figure out a way to pay for those services without tapping your HS A if your intent is to maximize your HS A for the future.And that again was Paul Fransson, Director of Health Benefits Research at the employee benefit Research Institute.And so he was basically explaining that while, you know, it is an expensive road ahead, there are new ways and better ways to prepare if you start in time.Thanks so much.Appreciate it.