Reply #13: Your profile doesn't say where you live, but it you're anywhere inside... [View All]

their service areas, check out Group Health Cooperative and/or Kaiser Permanente. These are non-profit healthcare providers -- Group Health is actually member-owned. They provide extremely high quality healthcare at substantially less cost than the for-profit HMOs.

Getting your medical services via such an organization has the added emotional bonus of vexing the Conservatives: the Right despises them because they are functional mini-models of national single-payer healthcare -- working testimony to the ultimate viability of socialized medicine. (A big expression of the Right's hatred is Bush Administration policy to deliberately skew Medicare reimbursal formulae to shaft non-profits and co-ops, forcing their rates higher in comparison to the for-profit HMOs. Bush justifies this as "making the market more competitive": the Bush/Goebbels Big Lie for handing the for-profits yet another corporate-welfare advantage.)

You didn't say what field your business is in, but you might also check with appropriate professional or trade associations. Another good resource is the Small Business Administration -- that is, if the Bush Administration hasn't already shut down SBA operations in your area.

As to chambers of commerce, it again depends on your local area: some chambers are very effective advocates for small business and independent entrepreneurs, others unabashedly represent only the wealthiest corporate overlords and are thus hostile or indifferent toward everyone else: before going to a chamber, ask around of more established business people -- they'll surely know which way the local C-of-C wind blows.

Good luck!