ASI® Announces Health Insurance Assistance Program

TREVOSE, PA – July 12, 2006 – Advertising Specialty Institute®, the largest media organization serving the promotional products industry, announced today its new health insurance assistance program for ASI members.  The program provides ASI members with increased negotiating power to receive healthcare insurance for their employees and is a new benefit available to ASI members at no additional charge.

ASI has partnered with a leading health insurance evaluation and consulting firm – Mass Marketing Insurance Consultants (MMIC) – to allow ASI distributors and ASI suppliers to easily select and purchase group health insurance plans.  MMIC will evaluate what an ASI member firm’s group health insurance needs are, and based upon the size of the company and its location, will contact insurance companies to negotiate plans and quotes on their behalf.  MMIC will present the details of the quotes from two separate insurance companies for comparison and the distributor or supplier can select the one that saves money on their current plan, or provides new benefits.

“ASI suppliers and ASI distributors tell me the top two issues currently facing them are the rising costs of healthcare and recruiting and retaining high-quality staff to provide the level of service and experience customers expect,” said Timothy M. Andrews, president of ASI.  “Group healthcare coverage is expensive and plans are confusing.  This new benefit addresses the needs for affordable healthcare for our members and can provide better or new coverage than their employees have now – helping to attract and retain high-quality staff.  ASI is proud to be the first industry organization to provide a customized health insurance program for the industry.” 

MMIC was selected by ASI as the partner for the program, because it works with more than 50 associations across the U.S. – representing 160,000 members – and because it has business relationships with 13 leading health insurance companies.  The process is simple and coverage is available to ASI member firms with one or more eligible employees – including owners, partners and officers – and there is no obligation. 

“Searching for superior healthcare options, while maintaining focus on company financial responsibility, can be challenging,” said Shelly Acres, accounting and human resources manager for Brand Fuel (asi/145025).  “Successful small businesses, like Brand Fuel, have a hard time acquiring competitive healthcare rates due to size.  ASI’s affiliation with MMIC opened up savings opportunities for us.  MMIC’s response time is amazing and the process to get quotes is much quicker than what I experienced when researching healthcare options independently.”   

The new program helps ASI members get health insurance coverage and also handles the entire renewal process each year.  MMIC will contact the ASI member at renewal time and will work with insurance companies to renegotiate rates and plans and offer alternatives.

ASI members will be enjoying the ability to save time and money with their health insurance plans and to enhance their benefits offerings to current and prospective employees.  

For more information about the new ASI health insurance assistance program, and to get started by completing a proposal request form, visit www.healthcareremedy.com or call 877-349-9111. 

About ASI
Advertising Specialty Institute is the largest media organization serving the promotional products industry, with a membership of 22,000 distributor firms (sellers) and supplier firms (manufacturers) of promotional products.  Supplier firms use ASI print and electronic resources to market products to more than 19,000 ASI distributor firms.  Distributor firms use ASI print and electronic resources, which contain more than 750,000 promotional products, to locate supplier firms and to market services to buyers.  ASI provides catalogs, informational directories, newsletters, magazines, websites and databases, and offers interactive e-commerce, marketing and selling tools.  Visit www.uat-asicentral.com.