Published December 2000

Need employee benefits? Check out a chamber

By Kimberly Hilden
Herald Business Journal Assistant Editor

When North County Bank went looking for affordable health care this past year, the bank’s staff size posed a challenge, Vice President Philip DiNuovo said.

“We only had a limited number of employees (eight at the time), and we wanted to get group coverage,” DiNuovo said. “There are very few places you can go to get that.”

According to Dun & Bradstreet’s 19th annual Small Business Survey, the challenge North County Bank faced weighs heavily on other companies as well.

The survey, which included interviews with 647 owners, senior executives and top managers in small businesses, found that the No. 1 problem faced by small businesses between 1999 and 2000 was rising health-care costs. Of those surveyed, 46 percent ranked health-care costs as a “major” concern.

For North County Bank and other businesses in Snohomish County, the search for affordable health-insurance packages has led them to area chambers of commerce, many of which offer access to benefits programs for members.

The Greater Marysville Tulalip Chamber of Commerce, for instance, is part of the Washington Business Association and Chamber of Commerce Trust and the Washington Farm Bureau Medical Trust, which enable small companies to join together to get affordable insurance through mass purchasing.

Under the trust consortium, chamber members can choose from a number of health-care packages, said insurance broker Bill Yeager, a principal of Association Benefits Corp. who has worked with the Marysville Tulalip chamber the past seven years.

Trust consortium “members ... are usually saving 20 percent of what the current rates are, and that’s conservative,” Yeager said.

North County Bank, already a Marysville Tulalip chamber member, decided to go with the trust consortium program after comparing other packages and finding the chamber’s plan the “least expensive for comparable coverage,” DiNuovo said about the Regence BlueShield PPO and HMO plans the bank selected.

The South Snohomish County Chamber of Commerce also offers members a number of programs that include coverage through WBACC trust programs, MEGA Life and Health Insurance Co. and PacifiCare of Washington.

With MEGA Life and Health, “the health insurance is done on a pick-and-choose ... basis, giving the client a wide variety of options,” said Sandra Sanders, an area manager for UGA-Association Field Services, a division of financial-services company UICI. “We have options for outpatient care, accidents and maternity. We offer two different prescription drug options. We also have dental and life insurance.”

The plan, endorsed by the National Association for the Self-Employed, “is for small business and self-employed people and considered a group policy,” Sanders said. “This is a lower risk group and is reflected in the premiums.”

Under the Everett Area Chamber of Commerce’s benefits program, member businesses that choose to participate are pooled into one group for the medical plan, giving them a larger-group rate, said Kathie Marr, Chair of the chamber’s Employee Benefits Committee/Affinity Programs.

The medical coverage program includes an HMO plan through Group Health Cooperative with a high level of benefits down to one person/employee, Marr said, adding that rates are generally 5 percent to 10 percent below the community pool.

Dental coverage, offered through United Concordia, includes a plan down to two people and multiple plans for larger groups, she said, and life and disability insurance plans are provided by Standard Insurance Co.

Created three years ago, Everett’s current benefits plan is provided by Rettenmier Benefits Group, which also offers market evaluations, Marr said.

“They have the ability to change as the markets change by evaluating our options for us,” she said.

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