Market pressures spur more advisers to examine discount card programs; It's not just vision and dental. It's golf, it's auto assist, it's just about everything - and that's got some enterprising advisers excited about new opportunities for adding value as employers continue to shift costs and shrink benefits.(Voluntary)(Column)

Byline: Robert L. Whiddon

Charlie McLamb is just like you.

"I'm running into the same thing everybody else is with the bad economy," says the owner of Charlotte, N.C.'s Southern Benefit Plans. "People are saying, 'Well I can't continue to provide these benefits for my employees.' Or, 'I need to cut back. Is there something else I can do?'"

One thing McLamb is doing is exploring the brave and new (for some) world of non-insurance benefits, offered by companies like New Benefits.

New Benefits is a nearly 20-year-old purveyor of discount cards - physician, pharmacy and chiropractic chief among them. But that doesn't really scratch the surface of the Dallas-based firm's menu of offerings.

Click on the products and services tab on their Web site and a listing of 45 different options appears - everything from the familiar (nurse hotlines and identity theft) to the unfamiliar (discounted moving and a golfer's savings program) among them.

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