Health care comes with trade: 
Businesses find option for providing coverage via exchange system
By Eric Pope / Special to The Detroit News
OAK PARK — Trade Exchange of America President Fred Detwiler doesn’t have dental insurance, but he can see a dentist without putting up his own cash. His dentist, Dr. Susan Griffin in Harper Woods, is a member of the Trade Exchange and accepts trade dollars rather than cash for dental services.
"I recently had a root canal done for a thousand dollars, but it wasn’t quite so bad when I paid for it with trade dollars," Detwiler said.
The Trade Exchange of America, which also operates as Tradefirst.com, has 5,000 member businesses in Metro Detroit that accept trade dollars instead of cash and then use them to buy goods and services from other members. The income is taxable and reported to the Internal Revenue Service on 1099 forms.
Like Detwiler, many member companies have found their employees can use trade dollars for health care benefits that often aren’t covered by health insurance plans. Some use trade dollars to fund "pre-tax" Section 125 medical savings accounts that aren’t taxed as employee income.
The Trade Exchange has about 100 dentists and 80 opticians as members. Detwiler said the demand for these services is helping his organization grow.
"People ask us to sign up their dentists, and then from the dentist we get the dental supply company and the dental lab," he said.
Roy Knoerr, the owner of Medical Village Optical Designs in Beverly Hills, gives his four employees trade dollars as a benefit, and they all use them for visits to Dr. Noah Levi in Southfield.
"He came to us to use trade dollars, then we started going to him," Knoerr said.
Knoerr said the biggest advantage of the barter system is that it brings in new customers who want to spend the trade dollars they have earned. "It exposes you to potential clients who you wouldn’t have access to otherwise," he said.
Southfield dentist Allan Finn generates $30,000 a year from Trade Exchange patients throughout Metro Detroit. He said that even patients who have dental insurance use trade dollars to cover co-pays or major expenditures that exceed their policy’s annual limits.
According to Dr. Finn, patients with trade dollars are more likely to get dental work done than people paying cash. "They are more receptive to better dental care and cosmetic procedures," he said.
That has been true this year for Doug Mikesell, a sales representative at Val Pak in Livonia. He used his pre-tax medical savings account funded with trade dollars to pay for three crowns. "Otherwise I would have been saving as I go to get them done one at a time," he said. CTS\Companies in Bloomfield Hills takes in more than $100,000 a year in trade dollars for its telephone services, and the company provides up to $200 in trade dollars to match money employees put into their medical savings accounts.
Vice President Joe Stevens said the company can’t afford to include dental and optical coverage in its health insurance plan, and the trade dollars enable him to add an important benefit. "Some people don’t go to the dentist as frequently as they should," he said.
Leonard Witulski, a Bloomfield Hills certified public accountant, uses trade dollars for employee bonuses, but he has found it isn’t worth the effort to set up Section 125 medical savings accounts for his small staff. He said employers should make sure their employees have enough medical expenses to justify the accounts, especially since any unspent balance is lost at the end of the year.