DUNCAN – Small business owners who are curious about ChamberCare, a new program to help businesses manage their health care costs, will get a chance to learn more about the program later this week.
The State Chamber of Oklahoma and the Duncan Chamber of Commerce will host a meeting about ChamberCare from 8 to 9 a.m. Friday Nov. 22 in the Health Careers auditorium at Red River Technology Center, 3300 W. Bois D’Arc Ave. in Duncan. There is no fee to attend the meeting.
ChamberCare is open to small businesses with two to 50 employees, President and CEO Chad Warmington told a Southwest Ledger reporter in a Sept. 3 interview. Businesses must be members of either the State Chamber or their local Chamber of Commerce to join the program, which offers a variety of plans to meet participants’ needs and budgets.
The program is a multiple-employer welfare arrangement, a group insurance plan that offers covers to employees of two or more companies that are not under common control. Oklahoma businesses that join the program can work together to form an insurance pool, which would help young, healthy companies save money on their health insurance premiums.
“By being able to provide affordable quality coverage for their employees, it’s a huge game changer for Oklahoma small businesses,” Warmington said in an Oct. 3 news release. “That’s what we’re here for. We’re here to do things, like policy, products, or services or whatever we can do to make Oklahoma the best state in the nation f or businesses.”
The State Chamber sponsors ChamberCare but does not own or operate the program, which is a separate trust. The program’s partners are Aetna’s network of health care providers; CVS/Caremark, the trust’s pharmacy/ benefits manager; CirrusMD, which offers virtual health services; and Allied, the trust’s third-party administrator.
Additional information about Chamber-Care is available at https://okstatechamber. com/chambercare.