I have been involved in software and programming for 20 years and has seen some cool things come and go, but this is really, really cool if you take the time to ponder how empowering it can be for Internet users.

The model for the last 15 years or so has been to capture traffic, capture users and capture sales. It seems that every website stuck in this web 1.0 mindset wanted to capture, control and direct their own traffic for their own benefit. The the revolutionary views of Facebook and the movement of commercial websites toward the Web 2.0 mindset marches onward with a completely different philosophy that is best demonstrated with the implementation of joining other websites with your Facebook or other social networking credentials.

Rather than seek to capture and control consumers the Web 2.0 movement seeks to expand access, service and the overall experience for the consumer’s benefit. The company I founded, DeRoches LLC has the InsurancePen.com website now using the login with Facebook module.

I think this makes all the sense of the world. The whole purpose of the InsurancePen.com approach was to gather insurance buyers into large groups so they can better negotiate their rates and terms with insurance carriers. Now creating and growing these groups gets a whole lot easier because there are already hundreds of millions of people using Facebook.

I’m looking forward to creating a couple groups of my own this week and using my Facebook account to announce and share the groups information with my friends, family and business associates using Facebook. I hope that you will look into doing the same.

Whether it is health insurance, auto insurance or business insurance, consumers benefit by buying together. The larger the numbers the better the negotiation will go with insurance companies. This is done the rule in the insurance industry for hundreds of years. Now that InsurancePen can leverage the power of Facebook to build these numbers I have confidence that it will help a great number of consumers during an economic cycle when they need the help the most.

I’ve spent a good portion of my career in the insurance industry focused on the creation and distribution of alternative insurance products through buying groups. The groups have ranged from business affiliates to trade associations to industry groups.

The problem with creating a new group has always been the nightmarish logistics in pulling group members together,assembling the data and marketing the group to insurance carriers. Fortunately, DeRoches LLC was formed to streamline these tasks and bring new groups of insurance buyers together using the Internet.

There have been many studies commissioned and reported in Michigan that show a need for savings, flexibility and in many cases — consolidation of health insurance purchases. There is even a proposal to pull all of the public entities into a government run monopoly.

In reviewing these studies as well as the proposals that are now on the table it becomes clear that what is lacking is not government involvement but simply a greater menu of choices for the public entity employers. The public entity employers on the other hand cannot spend all of their time focused on buying health insurance — they are looking for a simple solution that provides them with new competitive choices for their budgeting purposes and collective bargaining negotiations.

InsurancePen.com has launched a new group that every public entity in Michigan can participate in. The public entity can simply enter their plan information once and use it to obtain competitive quotes from every health insurance carrier as well as every other health insurance plan options such as self-insured groups. Once a sufficient number of public entities have joined the group, they can even break off and create regional groups or groups based on the type of employees they have without any additional work.

When any employer is paying too much for any one expense item they should look for competitive options. Finding those options for health insurance in Michigan should now be a lot easier using the InsurancePen.com website.

It is our hope that we can help the public entities in Michigan save money for their cash strapped budgets so they can better afford the core services that are expected of them.

To learn more about the new public entity health insurance group being formed for the state of Michigan, visit InsurancePen.com. If you know someone who is involved with their local city, school, County or any other government in Michigan please let them know that new options will be available for them for their health insurance in 2010.

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