Janie Villareal McClinchie had looked into health insurance for her small business before. It wasn’t realistic. Rates were crazy, she said.
She and her husband run Que Retro Arts, a small Westside business based at Basila Frocks on North Zarzamora Street.
“My husband and I, we had to have full-time jobs, as well as running a small business, to have health insurance,” she said.
Last week, though, she said her husband considered retiring in order to run Que Retro full time.
That was because of an event she, along with a handful of other San Antonio small business owners, attended. Nonprofit CollectiveX, also known as the Texas Economic Xchange, held its first info session where it asked Texas small businesses to come together and collectively buy products and services to lower their costs and increase their negotiating power.
McClinchie is already signed up.
“Before, health insurance was really not an opportunity. The fact that we now have accessibility for affordable health insurance is amazing,” McClinchie said. “I don’t know why this has never happened before.”
Julissa Carielo, the nonprofit’s cofounder and a San Antonio small business owner, said CollectiveX can access prices and rates that individual small businesses would never be able to. “Because we don’t buy in big quantities, it’s so expensive,” Carielo said. “We go through the normal, every day buying of the things we need and it costs us a lot more.”
Carielo said she wanted to start with health insurance because it’s such a pressing need.
Last year, she only had one health insurance carrier offer to work with her contracting and construction development company, the DreamOn Group. Insurance costs for the 35-employee, Westside-based business would have increased 140%, she said.
“If we can’t offer [workers] benefits, we lose them. We always lose them to bigger corporations with better benefits. We need to level the playing field,” Carielo said. “I know I’m not the only one going through this.”
On Thursday, Carielo told other small business owners that her annual costs could shrink from $750 per worker to $329 per worker.
The benefits offered would also improve with lower deductibles and healthcare coverage available across the country, not just limited to a few San Antonio-area hospitals or clinics. Vision, dental, disability and life insurance could also be available.
Those prices are projections, not guarantees. To get the best deal from insurers, Carielo said, CollectiveX needs to sign up 1,000 members by Oct. 1. Those who join after that deadline would have a delay before activating benefits and that would not help leverage lower rates. The nonprofit is open to employers across the state and has no restrictions on who might join.
Carielo said 358 members had signed up as of Sept. 3.
“If there’s a large business that wants to join us and leverage their buying power … they can participate,” Carielo said. “Even if they’re a business of one employee, they can join.”
Interested employers can sign up online at CollectiveX’s website.
Allison De Paoli, who runs Altiqe, a San Antonio-based health insurance consultancy, said she sees this challenge regularly for businesses with less than 50 workers.
“Small employers, particularly in that 15-20 employee space, they get the worst of it,” she said.
Those insurance plans have less employees and smaller risk pools. One medical event for one employee can eat into a greater portion of that employers’ money.
“For each employee, there are only so many dollars available,” De Paoli said.
Texas state law allows for healthcare cooperatives and has done so in some form since 1993. There are at least 36 registered across the state.
Carielo aims to increase her number of employees. “If I could secure $300,000 in savings in healthcare benefits, I would hire six more people,” she said.
LeRoy Cavazos-Reyna runs Localism, a political and business consulting firm. He already has health insurance through a family member, but joined CollectiveX for the opportunities to come.
“As a small business owner who didn’t need healthcare, I’m interested in what comes next,” Cavazos-Reyna said.
He envisions a nonprofit that can buy everything from smartphones to construction materials to Post-its to package deals on shipping and airline services. CollectiveX takes a small administrative fee for negotiating the bulk discounts and then sells products on to its members at reduced prices.
Jimmy Barocio, a local barber, said he can see CollectiveX expanding.
“It’s a great idea,” he said. “At the end of the day, you have to go with the cheapest option. Like going to the cheaper gas station.”
That’s just another thing that could be cheaper, McClinchie pointed out. CollectiveX could negotiate deals for travel and vehicles.
Aubrey Gilbert runs Homegirls Coffee at Basila Frocks. She hadn’t even considered health insurance for her workers until Carielo brought up the opportunity.
“Being a small business owner, I think it’s important to take care of my employees because they take care of us,” she said. “We have three or four employees. If they go down, we go down too.”
