SIMI VALLEY : Coalition Forms on Health Care

A newly formed business coalition in Simi Valley hopes to repeat a successful Minnesota venture in which local businesses negotiated as a block for health care plans, achieving substantially lower costs.

The Simi Valley Chamber of Commerce’s health care task force is made up of Chairman Alan Rice, president of Simi Valley Hospital and Health Care Services; co-chairman and chamber President Mike McCaffery, a local health insurance salesman; Joe Cassella, of Simi Pacific Building Materials, and Dick Ballagh, of Micom Communications Corp. in Simi Valley.

“If nothing else, we want to disseminate information about what’s going on on the health-care front in Washington, D.C., and in California, to business owners in Simi Valley,” McCaffery said. “But we also would like to do something unique, which is to devise a generic health plan for use by all the businesses in Simi Valley.”

McCaffery said the Simi Valley attempt is based on a coalition organized in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul in the fall of 1991. Called the “Business Health Care Action Group,” it includes 14 area employers that together spend 6% of the local health care dollars.

The businesses reportedly found that by pooling their buying power, they enhanced their clout on the health care market. They soon began dictating the plans they wanted, instead of purchasing the health care that providers put on the market.

McCaffery said he hopes to include small as well as large businesses in the fledgling local coalition, which will begin meeting monthly in October. So far, he said, the response from Simi Valley business owners has been positive.

“We have not had anybody say, ‘No, this is not really what I want,’ ” he said. “Everyone we’ve talked to is interested in finding out more about it.”