"Commerce Lexington has partnered with Humana to offer a discount health insurance program to the small employers who make up 87 percent of its membership. For the purposes of the program, Chamber officials define small businesses as those with 2-99 employees.
"We survey our members to get feedback about what they need," said Shari Fiveash, Commerce Lexington executive vice president. "One of the continual comments we get is, 'Help us with our bottom line. Help us with health care.'"
The program includes discounted health, dental, and life insurance coverage for small businesses in Central Kentucky and the Bluegrass region starting immediately. John Kiebler, director of small business sales for Humana-Central Kentucky, said options include Humana's consumer-choice offerings (high-deductible health plans with health savings accounts) as well as more traditional preferred provider organization (PPO) plans. "Participating members also will have access to health information and online tools offered by Humana to help them better manage their benefits," he added.
"Commerce Lexington has tinkered with this idea for years," said Fiveash. "We did a huge RFP and had numerous responses, worked through the whole process of presentations and the works to come to this partnership."
Humana's broad network was a determining factor, said Fiveash, along with "the things that they could offer us on a continual annual basis, including the discount."
"One thing we found interesting," noted Humana's Kiebler, "is that the core of the businesses in Central Kentucky are small. We find that the chamber of commerce membership perfectly mirrors what you see in businesses in Lexington. Eighty percent of members of Commerce Lexington are businesses under 50 (employees). Humana has a significant amount of that type of business in and around this area. We felt that partnering with the chamber of commerce would give us a great forte in that type of market, which we are seeking."
Not lost on Humana, said Kiebler, was Lexington's ranking in a 2006 survey by Mercer Consulting as 48th among the world's 50 best cities to live in. "It's building and growing, and it's growing with a lot of smaller businesses that are looking for answers." (The analysis is part of Mercer Consulting's annual Worldwide Quality of Living Survey, covering more than 350 cities. Each city is evaluated on a basis of 39 criteria, including political, social, economic and environmental factors, personal safety and health, education, transportation, and other public services.) "If you look at how the population has grown in the last 10 or 15 years, particularly with all the work and energy that the Lexington chamber has put in to try to attract new businesses and give them a place to meet and talk about best practices, best place to work," Kiebler observed, "it's a perfect environment where businesses are looking for partners to help them and give some advice and steerage." Kiebler said that made it a perfect fit for Humana, because the company and chamber are targeting the same type of market.
In Central Kentucky, Humana's product portfolio includes PPOs, consumer-choice offerings including high-deductible health plans with health savings accounts, its HumanaOne individual coverage, dental and life products, and numerous Medicare products including Medicare Advantage plans that combine health and drug coverage, and stand-alone prescription-drug plans.
"A lot of people can't afford the possibility of a major crisis in their health care," said Fiveash. "For a business to offer an affordable insurance package is enormous. People know now that it's not just the salary you make, it's the benefits - it's everything from your health care to the time you have with your family. It's that whole package that keeps and retains your employees. The cost of hiring a new employee is enormous."