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(Full version of the Eaton Apothecary testimonial.)

Mark A. Dumouchel
President
John H. Lynch, III
Vice President
Operating Policy

Eaton Apothecary, Holliston, MA

January 1, 2008

"Eaton Apothecary is a Massachusetts-based retail pharmacy chain of 22 worksites and nearly three hundred employees.

Our workforce is diverse; comprised of professionals earning six figures, high school students earning a little spending money, and a lot of people in the middle. Approximately half of our workforce is full time, and slightly over one hundred employees require health insurance from the company.

Like all other employers, individuals and governments, Eaton Apothecary has struggled to provide top-notch benefits to its employees in the wake of rapidly escalating health insurance costs. As managers, we are constantly watching how every decision will impact our people and our bottom line and have found it difficult of late to strike a favorable balance.

In 2007, we faced a moderate 7.5% increase from Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts, our carrier of over a decade. This increase would for the first time put our projected annual health insurance spend over a million dollars - a milestone certainly not to be celebrated.

Our previous approach to cost containment was to simply allow our broker to manage the percentage increase; maybe tweak some copayments here and there to save a few dollars and keep pace with inflation. We assumed increases were inevitable and that we were doing all that we could to provide quality benefits to our employees at the lowest cost.

We were wrong.

In November 2007, we were introduced to Jim Edholm of Business Benefits Insurance Brokerage, Inc. Seven weeks later, on January 1, 2008, our employees have a better plan than ever before and the company is saving nearly $130,000 in calendar 2008!

In our first meeting with Jim he listened to our current offerings and learned about our company, our people and our ideal situation regarding the tradeoff between quality health coverage and cost savings.

Unlike what other brokers have done, he brought nothing to sell into this meeting and had no specific agenda of what carrier or what plan type we as an employer should consider for our company.

In the second meeting a week later, Jim presented us with a high-level comparison of our current plan to different scenario solutions including:

• demographic improvement,
• multiple option plans,
• health reimbursement arrangements,
• high deductible health plans with health savings accounts and true self funding to name a few.

Each of these came with hard numbers based on actual quotes for Eaton Apothecary's actual workforce. Each option had clearly labeled pros and cons as well as the costs - easily understood by business people like us with no human resources experience.

After being presented with the options in what we truly believe was an unbiased and completely objective manner, Eaton Apothecary elected to proceed with a hybrid of three different options he presented.

• Change to Harvard-Pilgrim Healthcare - America's #1 Health Plan
• Offer a dual option plan
  • Traditional HMO with identical benefits to our current plan
  • High deductible PPO with health savings account through Sovereign Bank
• Offer an opt-out incentive to persons with qualified individual coverage (not group coverage through a spouse)

The High deductible health plan with a health savings account (HSA) provides not only better benefits for the employee than the HMO, but also a great degree of savings for the employer.

Jim explained to us all about HSAs, their triple tax-free status and all of the advantages of consumer-driven health plans. Substantially all of the savings in 2008 will be derived from employees electing the PPO/HSA over the traditional HMO product.

Despite the benefits to both employee and employer, we faced a challenge of breaking the HMO-biased minds of our employees through education. The HSA can be complicated, and the benefits complex.

To accomplish our educational goals, we set up two evening benefits meetings and Jim scheduled his staff as well as product specialists from Harvard Pilgrim and Sovereign Bank to attend, present and answer questions.

The second meeting was during a major snowstorm and despite both the conditions and projected low attendance Jim arrived early and prepared.

By the live date of January 1st, over 60 percent of our employees elected the PPO with HSA, including the six-member senior management team.

Eaton Apothecary, its employees and shareholders are lucky to have Jim Edholm's expertise in our corner. He was able to learn our company, objectively present a myriad of possibilities and execute our selections to a superior level of performance all in the span of seven weeks.

To a company of our size with limited resources and limited time, our experience working with Jim Edholm and his team, as well as saving $130,000, has been worth every second, worth dropping our long-time health insurer and worth changing brokers."

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