Small Business Key to Cover Tennessee
From The City Paper: The “success or failure” of the centerpiece of Gov. Phil Bredesen’s Cover Tennessee insurance plan will be whether enough small businesses can be sold on enrolling in the program, the governor said Monday. “I think that certainly the key to success is to get small businesses to buy in,” Bredesen told reporters Monday. The enrollment process will begin this fall after Bredesen ceremonially signed the umbrella, $358 million Cover Tennessee plan into law Monday at the location of a Nashville-based small business, Plumgood Food.
Plumgood is an example of a small business that the governor hopes will start covering its 23 employees through the new insurance plan for the working poor. That part of the six-part Cover Tennessee initiative is called Cover TN, which will cost about $100 million over three years.
Eric Satz, Plumgood president, said he was originally going to sign his employees up for private insurance through Blue Cross Blue Shield. But after hearing about the main aspect of Cover TN, Satz is reconsidering.
“We are definitely going to look at this,” Satz said.
Cover TN would use a premium averaging about $150 per month. At Plumgood, the $150 monthly payments would be split equally between one of Satz’ enrolled employees, Plumgood and the state.
The benefits the $150 per month would buy are not known at this point because private insurance companies, such as Blue Cross, will get a chance to bid on what benefits they can provide for $150 a month.
To attract companies like Plumgood to enroll, Bredesen said his administration will have to “find ways to get this in their hands” to companies employing a maximum of 25 people with a qualifying percentage of employees earning $24,000 or less annually.
“We’re just going to use all the channels we know of,” Bredesen said, adding that he thinks “word of mouth” will be the “strongest” marketing tool.
If not enough small businesses or healthy people sign up, Bredesen said the program will fail, and then the state will only “have a very expensive, very narrow program that won’t work.”
In hopes that won’t happen, one of those channels Bredesen said he would rely on will likely be the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB), which represents 10,000 small businesses in Tennessee.
Gary Selvy, the state’s NFIB director, said once more of the details of the plan become clear, it would poll its members to gauge their level of acceptance.
“Should they embrace that, we absolutely want to be part of making sure we get the plan out there in front of them,” Selvy said.
Another private sector aspect of trying to sell Cover TN to small business will be through the two private insurance carriers that submit the best two bids to provide the $150 per month health insurance. Once the contracts are awarded, Cover TN will rely on the insurance companies to market the initiative to small business.
“The state is not a marketing organization,” Bredesen said about using the private sector to sell Cover Tennessee.
But the Bredesen Administration will be doing some marketing of its own on the overall, six-part Cover Tennessee plan, not just specifically the small business aspect.
The administration’s methods for getting Tennesseans to use Cover Tennessee’s services will be through establishing a “central phone line” as well as coordinating a Web site to help possible enrollees, said Andrea White, a spokesperson for Cover Tennessee.
There has already been some interest. From March 27, the day Bredesen unveiled Cover Tennessee, until today, White said more than 5,000 people have called a state help line to ask how they can sign up for different aspects of Cover Tennessee, White said.
By John Rodgers, jrodgers@nashvillecitypaper.com
