ICHRA in Rome, Georgia 2026: Floyd County 49%

Does ICHRA beat small group in Rome, Georgia?

Yes, and by a wider-than-average margin for Georgia. An ICHRA (Individual Coverage Health Reimbursement Arrangement) is an IRS-defined arrangement that lets an employer set a fixed monthly reimbursement amount and let each employee buy their own individual-market plan with it, tax-free. In Floyd County, the Georgia county that contains Rome, Cave Spring and Armuchee, the 2026 individual-market benchmark premium runs an estimated 49.0% below the small-group benchmark premium, according to a county-by-county comparison built from Ideon rate data and cross-verified against CMS public-use marketplace files.

That 49.0% ranks 61 out of Georgia's 158 counties by percentage, and it sits above the statewide average of 37.2%, well above what metro Atlanta shows for 2026 (Fulton County runs 11.5%). Rome is Northwest Georgia's largest city and a genuine regional health-care hub, home to two hospital systems serving patients from well beyond Floyd County's own 99K residents. That combination, a real health-care and manufacturing employer base plus a rate spread wider than most of the state, is what makes Floyd County worth its own guide rather than a line in a statewide roundup.

Of the 1,309 counties nationwide in our dataset, 158 are in Georgia, and 131 of them clear the $100-a-month gap we use as the floor for calling a county "qualifying" at all — unlike Ohio, where every county clears that bar, Georgia is genuinely mixed. Floyd clears it comfortably, at $ 626.56 a month. The question that matters for a Floyd County employer isn't whether the county "qualifies" in the abstract, it's what this specific gap is worth to a specific headcount, and whether it solves the actual problem a Floyd County employer runs into with group coverage. That's what the rest of this guide works through.

Why Floyd, Chattooga, Gordon and Polk share the exact same number

Look closely at the numbers behind this article and you'll notice something that looks like a typo but isn't: Floyd County's individual benchmark ($652.61), small-group benchmark ($1279.17), and 49.0% savings figure are identical, to the cent, to Chattooga, Gordon and Polk counties, plus Gilmer County farther northeast. That's not a coincidence and it's not our dataset repeating a number by mistake.

The ACA marketplace and small-group insurance markets don't price coverage county by county. They price it by rating area, a set of geographic zones each state defines (subject to federal rules) that carriers use to file one set of benchmark rates covering every county inside that zone. Georgia's insurance regulators grouped Floyd, Chattooga, Gordon, Polk and Gilmer counties into the same rating area for 2026, so any carrier filing a plan in that zone filed one price, not five. A Rome employer and an employer in Cedartown (Polk County) or Calhoun (Gordon County) are looking at the exact same underlying math, even though they sit in different counties and, in Calhoun's case, a different school district and a different Congressional district entirely.

Here's why that matters practically: if you're a Floyd County employer and a broker quotes you a small-group renewal that looks meaningfully different from the $1279.17 benchmark used here, ask whether that's a plan-design difference (richer benefits, a different metal tier) or a genuine rating-area mismatch, because it shouldn't be the latter. And if your business has locations or remote employees split across this rating area's five counties, the ICHRA math doesn't get more complicated the way a multi-county group quote sometimes does, since the benchmark comparison is identical across all five.

Source: src/data/qualified_counties.json, 2026 plan year (Ideon rate data, cross-verified against CMS public-use marketplace files). Estimates, not quotes.

Rome and Floyd County's economy, in the numbers

Rome grew up as a regional hub, not a bedroom community, and its employer base still reflects that: health care, manufacturing, and higher education anchor the county rather than one dominant industry. Per the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics' Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW), Floyd County's private-sector employers reported an annual average of 44,187 jobs across 2,420 establishments in 2025, at an average annual pay of $52,215. Within that total, manufacturing (NAICS 31-33) accounted for 6,144 jobs across 115 establishments — roughly 4.8% of the county's private establishments but about 13.9% of its private employment — at a considerably higher average annual pay of $72,012.

The Rome Floyd Chamber, citing Georgia Department of Labor data, names Atrium Health Floyd as the county's largest employer, alongside Berry College, Harbin Clinic, F&P Georgia (an automotive parts manufacturer), Floyd Healthcare Management, Gordon Hospital, International Paper, Keebler Company, Lowe's, Century II Staffing and Walmart among the region's ten largest employers. Two hospital systems serving Northwest Georgia and Northeast Alabama out of a county of 99K residents is not a small detail: it means a meaningful share of Floyd County's workforce, in health care alone, works irregular shifts across a range of income levels, which is exactly the kind of workforce a one-size-fits-all group plan struggles to fit well.

Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages, Floyd County, Georgia (area code 13115), 2025 annual averages.

Why 2026 renewals keep landing high in Georgia

For Floyd County employers who already carry a small-group plan, the renewal letter has likely gotten heavier, and that's not a Rome-specific quirk. Nationally, small-group insurers filed a median proposed premium increase of 11% for the 2026 plan year, across 318 insurers filing in all 50 states and the District of Columbia, according to the Peterson-KFF Health System Tracker's September 24, 2025 brief. That same analysis is upfront about a gap in its own data: Georgia's insurers didn't have all of their 2026 small-group rate filings publicly available, so the brief doesn't publish a Georgia-specific proposed increase. The honest answer is that no sourced Georgia small-group figure exists for this article to cite; the 11% national median is the most defensible comparison point available, and Georgia's own renewal letters are the only real evidence for what carriers actually filed here.

The individual market tells a clearer Georgia-specific story. healthinsurance.org's 2026 Georgia marketplace guide puts the average unsubsidized rate increase at 34.6% across the 10 insurers offering marketplace plans in Georgia for 2026. That sounds like it should shrink ICHRA's advantage, and in some counties it has. But the benchmark comparison behind this article already reflects those 2026 filed rates on both sides, individual and small-group, which is why Floyd County's 49.0% gap is the net result after both markets' 2026 increases are already priced in, not a number that ignores the individual market's own recent hikes.

The pressure sits on top of an already-expensive national baseline. KFF's 2025 Employer Health Benefits Survey, published October 22, 2025, found the average annual premium for employer-sponsored family coverage nationally reached $26,993 in 2025, up 6% ($1,408) from 2024. That's not a Floyd County number, it's a national one, but it's the baseline every local small-group renewal is layered on top of.

How an ICHRA (now also called CHOICE) actually works

Before the Floyd County numbers mean anything, it helps to be precise about what's being compared.

An ICHRA is an employer-funded health reimbursement arrangement created by a 2019 final rule from the IRS and Treasury, the Department of Labor, and HHS, published at 84 Fed. Reg. 28888 on June 20, 2019, applicable to plan years beginning on or after January 1, 2020. Instead of choosing one group health plan for everyone, the employer sets a fixed monthly reimbursement amount, and each employee uses that money to buy an individual-market plan of their own choosing, then submits proof of coverage (called substantiation) to get reimbursed tax-free. The employer isn't picking a plan for dozens of different households with different doctors and different needs; the employer is funding a budget, and the employee is doing the shopping.

Worth naming directly: as of this article's publish date, HealthCare.gov's own page on this arrangement is titled "CHOICE Arrangements," and states plainly that CHOICE Arrangements are "formerly known as the Individual Coverage Health Reimbursement Arrangements, or ICHRAs." That's an administrative renaming on federal consumer-facing pages, not a change to the 2019 final rule or to any compliance requirement described in this article. We use "ICHRA" throughout this site, since that's still the term used in the regulations themselves.

The comparison behind every number in this article rests on two specific prices for a given rating area. The individual-market benchmark premium is the second-lowest-cost silver-level plan available in that rating area to a representative 40-year-old enrollee. "Silver" is one of four ACA metal levels (bronze, silver, gold, platinum) describing how costs split between premium and out-of-pocket spending, not the quality of care. This is the same benchmark the federal government uses to calculate premium tax credits, which is why it's a defensible number to build a comparison on rather than one insurer's list price. The small-group benchmark premium is the equivalent figure built from comparable small-group plan filings for that same rating area. When the individual benchmark is lower, the county "qualifies," and the gap between the two is the estimated per-employee savings if the employer funds ICHRA at that benchmark level.

Two more terms matter once an employer is actually deciding whether to switch. The affordability safe harbor is the test that decides whether the ICHRA offer counts as "affordable" under IRS rules — for plan years beginning in 2026 that test runs against a Required Contribution Percentage of 9.96% of household income (IRS Rev. Proc. 2025-25), rising to 10.22% for plan years beginning in 2027 (IRS Rev. Proc. 2026-26). Get the contribution amount wrong relative to that threshold and an ALE (applicable large employer, generally 50 or more full-time-equivalent employees) can trigger an employer-mandate penalty. Most of the small clinics, shops and suppliers described above are well under that threshold.

Floyd County's rate spread, in dollars

Here is the actual 2026 benchmark comparison for Floyd County, the county that contains Rome, Cave Spring and Armuchee. The individual-market benchmark premium is $652.61 a month. The small-group benchmark premium, built from comparable small-group plan filings for the same rating area, is $1279.17 a month. That's a gap of $626.56 a month, or $7,519 a year, per employee, an estimated 49.0% in favor of the individual market.

Put next to the rest of Northwest Georgia, Floyd's number is the shared rating-area figure for Chattooga, Gordon and Polk counties as well, while Whitfield County (Dalton, the carpet manufacturing hub an hour northeast) sits in a different rating area at 38.6%. Metro Atlanta is a different story entirely: Fulton County shows just 11.5%, and the Atlanta-exurb rating area that includes Bartow County shows only 2.8%. Floyd County's gap is real, sourced, and well above the state average, but it is not universal even within a two-hour drive.

See the full Georgia savings breakdown for every qualifying county, the national savings map to look up a specific county by name, or the statewide Georgia ICHRA guide for how Floyd County's number fits into the bigger picture.

Georgia's group participation rule, and why it still bites

Small-group health insurance isn't sold to individual employees one at a time; it's underwritten as a pool, and a carrier can require a minimum share of a company's eligible employees to actually enroll before it will issue the policy at all. Georgia regulates that authority more tightly than some states: under Ga. Comp. R. & Regs. R. 120-2-10-.12(9)(b), a small-group carrier cannot require more than 100% of eligible employees to participate for groups of three or fewer, and cannot require more than 75% of eligible employees for groups of four to fifty. That's a real cap, not a suggestion, and it's more employer-protective than a rule that simply lets carriers set their own bar with no ceiling.

Even a capped 75% requirement still bites for the kind of small employer common in Floyd County's health-care-and-manufacturing economy: a family clinic, a specialty contractor, or a small fabricator with a couple of employees covered through a spouse's plan, a part-timer under the hours threshold, or a new hire inside a waiting period can fail that 75% mark even though every employee technically has coverage somewhere. The BLS data above puts the average Floyd County manufacturing establishment at roughly 53 employees (6,144 jobs across 115 establishments), but that average hides plenty of shops running well smaller, exactly where a firm participation floor is easiest to miss.

An ICHRA (or CHOICE Arrangement, per HealthCare.gov's current naming) sidesteps the mechanic entirely when it's the only benefit offered. Per HealthCare.gov, there is no participation-percentage requirement at all in that case. A minimum class size only applies when an employer offers a CHOICE Arrangement to one employee class while also offering a traditional group plan to a different class: 10 employees for employers with fewer than 100 total employees, 10% of the total workforce for employers with 100 to 200 employees, and 20 employees for employers with more than 200. Those class-size rules exist to keep the two benefit types properly separated when both are in use; they don't apply at all to an employer offering only a CHOICE Arrangement.

Georgia's stalled state credit: what HB 1110 would have added

Two states, Indiana and Mississippi, already pay small employers a state income tax credit for offering an ICHRA, and Georgia came close to becoming a third in 2026. House Bill 1110, the Georgia Small Business Healthcare Affordability Act, was introduced January 29, 2026 by Rep. Scott Hilton along with co-sponsors Eddie Lumsden, Mark Newton, Matt Reeves, Vance Smith and Ron Stephens. A House committee substitute, favorably reported March 3, 2026, would have created a credit starting at $600 per covered employee and declining to $200 by the fifth year, available to employers with fewer than 50 employees that contribute at least $200 a month per employee to an ICHRA, capped at $10 million statewide per year and sunsetting December 31, 2030.

Per BillTrack50's legislative tracking record for the bill, HB 1110 did not pass the Senate before the 2026 session ended and is listed as dead. Unlike Ohio's still-pending HB 133, Georgia's bill would need to be reintroduced from scratch in a future session to have another chance; a Floyd County employer should not budget around a credit that no longer exists in the current session.

The county math in this article doesn't depend on that bill passing, now or later. Floyd County's 49.0% estimated gap is real for the 2026 plan year whether or not Georgia ever enacts a state credit on top of it; a future credit, if reintroduced and passed, would be additive, not a precondition. Our full guide to state ICHRA tax credits covers how Indiana's and Mississippi's enacted programs actually work, in case a revived Georgia bill becomes a useful template to watch.

A worked example for a Floyd County employer

Here's what the Floyd County numbers look like applied to a real headcount. Assume a 20-employee Floyd County company — a specialty clinic, a small manufacturer, or a professional-services firm — currently renewing a small-group plan priced at this year's Floyd County benchmark.

The same arithmetic scales down cleanly to a smaller case: an eight-person family medical practice in Rome that couldn't clear a carrier's 75% participation floor because two staff members are covered through a spouse's plan and one is still inside a 90-day waiting period at a prior job. That practice could fund an ICHRA at the $652.61 individual benchmark and offer a real, tax-free benefit for about $ 5221 a month in total contributions, offered to every eligible employee regardless of how many already have coverage elsewhere, since there's no enrollment percentage to clear.

At the other end of the size range, a 60-employee Floyd County manufacturer or hospital-adjacent practice crosses into ALE territory under the employer mandate, which changes the calculus without changing the underlying county math. The same benchmark comparison applies, but an ALE has to run the affordability safe-harbor test — against the 9.96% threshold for 2026 or 10.22% for 2027 — carefully for every employee class, since an ICHRA offer judged "unaffordable" for even a handful of lower-paid employees can trigger a penalty. That's not a reason to avoid ICHRA at 60 employees; it's a reason to model the affordability test before setting a contribution amount, which our eligibility guide walks through in detail.

Setting up an ICHRA in Floyd County

Georgia layers its own participation-cap rule on top of the federal framework, but the underlying setup sequence is the same one that applies in any other state. What determines whether a Floyd County rollout goes smoothly:

1. Pull your census by county, not by office address. A company headquartered in Rome with staff living in Chattooga, Gordon, Polk or Whitfield County shares a similar but not identical rate comparison; confirm each employee's actual home county rather than assuming.
2. Check whether you're offering ICHRA alone or alongside a group plan. That decision determines whether any class-size minimum applies at all.
3. Model affordability before you set a contribution. The reimbursement level decides whether an employee keeps or waives premium tax credit eligibility, against the 9.96% (2026) or 10.22% (2027) Required Contribution Percentage.
4. Define employee classes carefully, if you use them. A clinical-staff-versus-front-office split is a legitimate class distinction, but class rules carry minimum-size requirements when paired with group coverage.
5. Send the required notice on time. Eligible employees need written notice at least 90 days before the plan year starts, with specific required content.
6. Budget for onboarding support. Employees who have never shopped Georgia's individual marketplace on their own need guidance, once, at enrollment, especially given how many currently receive an ACA subsidy.

See our full ICHRA setup timeline for the detailed rollout plan, including the exact notice content requirements, and our eligibility guide for the affordability test itself.

The honest limits of this data

How these numbers are calculated

Every county figure in this article comes from the same dataset that powers our savings map, not a survey or a sales estimate. For each county, we compare a 2026 individual-market benchmark premium — the second-lowest-cost silver plan available to a representative enrollee, the same benchmark the federal government uses to calculate premium tax credits — against a small-group benchmark premium built from comparable small-group plan filings for that rating area. Both figures come from Ideon, a licensed insurance rate-data provider, and are cross-verified against CMS public-use marketplace files before publication. A county appears in our location-page dataset when the individual benchmark sits below the small-group benchmark by at least $100 a month; the percentage and dollar figures in this article are the gap between those two numbers, expressed as an annual per-employee figure at 12 times the monthly difference.

Floyd County's population figure (99K) comes from the same underlying county dataset used across the site; the Rome Floyd Chamber's demographics page independently lists Floyd County's 2020 population at 98,584, citing Georgia Department of Labor 2023 annual-average data, a close match from a separate source. The employment figures in the economy section — 44,187 total private jobs across 2,420 establishments at $52,215 average pay, and 6,144 manufacturing jobs across 115 establishments at $72,012 average pay — come from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics' Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages, Floyd County, Georgia (area code 13115), 2025 annual averages, a separate federal dataset from our own county premium comparison. The major-employer list comes from the Rome Floyd Chamber's demographics page, citing Georgia Department of Labor data. The participation-rule citation comes from Ga. Comp. R. & Regs. R. 120-2-10-.12(9)(b), as mirrored by Cornell Law School's Legal Information Institute. The national small-group premium figure (Peterson-KFF), the Georgia individual-market figures (healthinsurance.org), the national family premium figure (KFF), the IRS affordability percentages (Rev. Proc. 2025-25 and 2026-26), and the HealthCare.gov participation and naming details each come from separately published, independent sources, described and cited where they appear. House Bill 1110's status comes from BillTrack50's legislative tracking record, cross-checked against reporting from NFIB Georgia and Georgians for a Healthy Future. We've kept these data sources clearly separate throughout this article rather than blending them into one number.

Three limitations are worth stating plainly. First, benchmark premiums are built around a representative enrollee profile, so an unusually young or unusually old workforce will see a different real-world spread than the county figure implies. Second, these are benchmark plans, not every plan on the market; an employee who chooses a richer or leaner plan than the benchmark will see a different premium, though the relative spread tends to hold directionally. Third, rates are filed and refreshed annually, so a rating area that qualifies for 2026 is not guaranteed to qualify, or to keep its current percentage, for 2027 if a carrier enters or exits that market.

Questions Floyd County employers actually ask