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Compco Industries First to Enter Insurance Exchange
COLUMBIANA, Ohio -- Compco Industries said Thursday that it is the first employer in the Mahoning Valley to enter a private insurance exchange and will do so April 1.
“When faced with a large rate increase near the end of 2012, we knew we needed to develop a strategy to provide our employees with a long-term solution to our escalating health care costs,” said Rick Fryda, president and CEO of Compco, in a prepared statement. “DC Wellness began meeting with our benefits committee late last year, and an insurance exchange provided the best solution for our employees.”
Exchanges are new to Ohio, said Bob Gearhart Jr., “but they are not new to our agency.” Gearhart is the third generation in his family to manage Westlake-based DC Wellness, which his family owns. “With six medical options available in the Compco ‘store,’ employees can select the medical plan that meets their specific individual needs and budget”.
Employers who take the lead regarding the Affordable Care Act and become early adopters of “the positive aspects of the law will be much better off than employers waiting for their next renewal cycle to react,” Gearhart continued. Employers should be aware, he emphasized, that the lead time required to enter into an exchange in conjunction with a defined contribution strategy is twice the traditional annual open enrollment lead time.
The chief financial officer at Compco, Joel Sofranko, related how Compco arrived at its decision. “Bob outlined for us the tremendous advantages to our company and employees to be proactive in dealing with the Affordable Care Act. Ultimately we selected DC Wellness because of their hands-on approach and we have been very pleased with how smoothly our implementation went.”
Compco, formed in 1954 in Youngstown, today operates 160,000 square feet of production space in Columbiana where it makes several production lines of metal products used in agriculture, air travel, cryogenics, mining and extraction, lawn and garden care, sporting goods, ground transportation, and water storage.
DC Wellness is a regional health insurance broker that provides advice on health-care reform, insurance exchanges, self-funded medical plans, developing defined health insurance contribution strategies for employee benefit plans, and administering incentive-based wellness programs.
Published by The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.
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