As employers become increasingly concerned with delivery of health care benefits to their employees; there is an answer in Class-based Health Plan Carve-outs.
An employer can choose to offer different benefit packages to employees who:

• Perform different job duties, employees based on the department or location in which they work or employees with different dates of hire or lengths of service.
• An employer may also offer greater benefits to management personnel than to regular employees.
• Benefits offered can not be determined based on an employee’s age, race, sex, disability, compensation or any other class protected under state or federal law.

 Examples of compliant classifications:

• Fulltime vs. Part time
• Management vs. Non-management
• Office vs. Field
• Salary vs. Hourly
• Commission vs. Non-Commission

With these different classifications can be a combination of one or more and in sub-classes, for example:

• Salary and hourly with over 5 years of service vs. all hourly under 5 years with service
• Salaried in Florida vs. Salaried in Texas

In addition, a plan generally may treat participants and beneficiaries as two separate groups of similarly situated participants. The plan also may distinguish between beneficiaries based on, for example, their relationship to the plan participant (such as spouse or dependent child) or based on the age or student status of dependent children.
This method of health care deliver is an effective tool for long term stability of the health plan.