Freedom Benefits begins offering discount health plans and other employee benefot plans for members of U.S. business associations in January 2005.
(PRWEB) December 9, 2004 -- Freedom Benefits Association (FreedomBenefits.org) announces new association health plan pricing for small businesses beginning January 2005. The all-inclusive flat setup price of $150 will be discounted to $90 for members of participating business associations. This pricing also extends the other most popular small business benefit plans like group Health Reimbursement Arrangements (HRA), Health Savings Accounts (HSA), and self-directed 401(k) plans. This service includes initial planning consultation, benefit plan design, plan documents, employee enrollment communications, integration with payroll systems, and handling all set-up questions from the employer and individual employees.
Tony Novak, principal of Freedom Benefits, credits the political double-talk during the recent presidential election campaign for his motivation to develop the new association programs. I receive requests to design association health plans almost every month. My response has always been the same; there is really no advantage to the members and usually quite a bit of shady salesmanship involved in promoting these programs. I did not want to be involved". That will all be changed with the new benefits program. Rather than promote a fictitious advantage in health insurance plans, the Freedom Benefits programs offer sophisticated employee benefit plans to small firms that save money and allow employees to select the insurance of their choice or even benefit by selecting no insurance at all.
Association health plans are heavily promoted by the Bush administration as part of the three-pronged approach to national health care reform. Novak, like most employee benefits experts, sees no advantage or benefit to the approach as proposed by the President. We need to develop an approach that really works with tangible value and meaningful savings to the members." Novak is an employee benefits writer and a small business adviser for over 20 years. The new association plan makes tax-advantaged state-of-the-art benefit plans available to every small business for less than $100 flat fee. At this price, Novak says, almost every small business will recoup the setup cost in savings within the first couple of months.
The Freedom Benefits approach offers several advantages over other association health and member benefit plans: 1) each business customizes benefits to fit rather than force a one size fits all" approach for all association members, 2) it does not utilize commissioned sales agents and relies primarily on no-load financial products so there is no incentive to sell" a product that is not the best fit for the member, 3) one single point of professional contact for the members benefit plans improves efficiency and results, 4) response time is very fast – usually one business day for most benefit plan set-up issues.
Additional information is available at http://www.freedombenefits.org/associations.htm.
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