Quality of Life Podcast - Featuring St. Lucie County Chamber of Commerce

PSL Broadcasters- Hosts Gary Owen and Tom Bouvier June 29th, 2021, Tuesday morning. Facebook live and Tune into WSTU 1450 AM & WPSL 1590 AM or streaming live online. Quality of Life Radio Show “Bring relevance constant to listeners to supports and showcase our local businesses and provide education and information that will help ensure your quality of life.”

This weeks show features special guest Terissa Aronson. Terissa is the president CEO of the Saint Lucie County Chamber of Commerce. During the first half of the show, she goes into detail about how she came to the position and how she couldn't be happier serving the community.

The other half of the show, Tom and Gary go into the details about health insurance relations for the employer and employee. For more information, talk to Owen Insurance Group’s office at (772) 210-1020 to join!

 

Quality of Life radio brought to you by WellMed here are your hosts Gary Owen and Tom Bouvier and good morning out there to all of our friends listening in on this fabulous Florida Tuesday morning it is June 29th and it is the last Tuesday of June bye-bye June and hurricane season is now upon us so Florida batten down the hatches. 

 I don't think it's going to be a good year for us but anyway I'm your host Gary Owen and I'm your co-host Tom Bouvier. Our lovely special guest Terissa Aronson we're so good happy to have you on the show she is the president CEO of the Saint Lucie County Chamber of Commerce of which I'm a proud member and love the relationships, love what we're doing. 

So, without further ado, tell us a little bit about yourself Terissa and who you are what brought you here? If you've lived in Florida all your life and then what got you involved in the St. Lucie chamber? 

A little bit about me I'm not good at that I can talk about the chamber for an hour but myself it gets a little tricky but I am not a native Floridian I consider myself a buckeye because I went to Ohio state and I grew up in central Ohio so a real Midwesterner here in St. Lucie county.  

People ask me from time to time how is it that you came to become the CEO of the Saint Lucie County Chamber of Commerce or anything you know non-profit head is not usually a career track for most people. I'm not sure would work out for everybody that is certainly not any major they had at Ohio state but you know like everything in life it happened from circumstance and I think it happened for the best and I couldn't be happier to be serving as St. Lucie county CEO the chamber of commerce. 

  Since 2000 you have seen St. Lucie county just absolutely explode. You go up to Fort Pierce where they have a hundred years of history and sure St. Lucie county has got just a mere, you know 60 years of history.  

I now, serve on the historical society for port St. Lucie and so I've seen all the pictures and my goodness I mean we're up over 200,000 I think now. 

I was here in ‘86 and I can remember Port Saint Lucie Boulevard being a single lane road and then, where the turnpike is, that was that was it. That's where the road ended and there were all woods beyond. It's amazing how the growth that we've seen.  

probably one of my favorite parts of my job is the political aspect of it and working with local government but right now we're working on regulatory issues again for businesses my primary goal is to be an advocate for business so everything i do politically within the community it ties back to that business community. 

Contact us at (772) 595-9999 and stluciechamber.org and find out more information I highly recommend it.  2937 W Midway Rd, Fort Pierce, FL 34981 

I figured today we would talk because tourist is here representing, the chamber of commerce and small businesses. What better time to talk about group health insurance for small businesses because so many of us, small business owners, may be having trouble keeping and retaining good quality people so one way to do that obviously is to pay them appropriately number one, number two offer benefits. 

Tom, so what say you absolutely so this is definitely one of the ways especially after the covid era where people can not only attract but also retain good employees and that's providing health insurance of course group health insurance. 

There are several factors that a person would have to think about if you would like to get health insurance for your employees now typically group health, is as low as four full-time employees or four employees that are going to be covered up to unlimited numbers. So, you really have to have an understanding of how much you want to contribute for their insurance many times employers will cover 100 percent. 

I think at minimum 50 percent or somewhere in between so it's a cost sharing of the employee provides part of the premium and the employer provides the other amount now another thing that if a person an employer would not or doesn't have the means to provide full health care coverage, they can do what's called worksite coverage and that's voluntary benefits such as accident insurance, disability, dental, life insurance, cancer hospital confinement, and annuities insurance.  

This would be along the lines of a colonial life or a flex type of product so where the employee actually pays a portion out of their paycheck every month. 

I just wanna just remind everybody that there are four things to consider when buying group health insurance. Obviously, it's having a sense for how much you as an employer versus your employee will contribute. You know what the monthly premiums are going to be and typically what we're finding the national average employers are spending about 82 percent of the coverage for their employees, that's number one. 

  Number two, understand what the employees value most in a policy, we hear it all the time. Tomorrow they're complaining because their PPOs insurance policy isn't covering anything. It's a high deductible, it doesn't have it pays for a co-pay once you hit the deductible it's just garbage, so that's important Number three. 

Look beyond the premium when comparing plans there's a lot to go into a policy it could be co-insurance it could be co-pays it could be out-of-pocket maximum, it could be prescription drug plan coverage all the things we will look at for you, by the way, how much do we cost to do that? Zero.  

Then also just consider adding vision and dental and the voluntary benefits to the mix as well again providing more choice not necessarily more cost and that's the service and the magic that we perform on a daily basis. 

Contact us at (772) 210-1020 and https://www.oweninsurancegroup.net/  

1611 NW Federal Highway Stuart, FL, 34994