BusinessWeek Online Examines Efforts By Three Small Companies To Provide Health Insurance To Employees

Main Category: Health Insurance / Medical Insurance
Article Date: 23 Mar 2006 - 14:00 PDT

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BusinessWeek Online on March 16 profiled efforts by three small businesses to provide health benefits for employees "despite the pressures and costs." Summaries appear below.

• Butler-Berger, a Texas-based real estate company with 50 employees, in 1998 entered an agreement with Gevity, a Florida-based human resources company with a network of hundreds of thousands of workers, to provide health and other benefits for Butler employees. Under the agreement, Butler pays Gevity $950 per employee annually, and "Gevity technically becomes Butler's employer," which allows Butler workers to "receive a menu of health and other benefits" at a lower cost by "taking advantage of the economies of scale," BusinessWeek Online reports.
  


• Commonwealth Industries, a Virginia-based industrial services company with 18 employees, since 1990 has reduced health benefits, increased fees, changed carriers and policies, and asked workers to contribute more to the cost of premiums.
  


• Micromain, a Texas-based software company with 43 employees, in 2003 began to offer workers a high-deductible health plan with a health savings account in addition to a traditional PPO plan. About 60% of Micromain employees have enrolled in the HSA, which costs 30% to 40% less than the PPO plan, and workers who remain in the PPO plan pay the difference (Perman, BusinessWeek Online, 3/16).

"Reprinted with permission from http://www.kaisernetwork.org. You can view the entire Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report, search the archives, or sign up for email delivery at http://www.kaisernetwork.org/dailyreports/healthpolicy. The Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report is published for kaisernetwork.org, a free service of The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation . © 2005 Advisory Board Company and Kaiser Family Foundation. All rights reserved.

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