County Board opts to stick with current insurance plan

By Editor | June 19, 2024 |

By Carmen Ensinger

Sometimes the cheapest isn’t always the best and lucky for the Greene County Board, they learned this sooner than later.
It was time for renewal of insurance for the County’s employees and next year the county was going to see a significant increase in the per month rate for each employee.
The county pays 100 percent for each employee’s insurance. If there is a co-pay, that is reimbursed to the employee.
The current plan with Blue Cross Blue Shield would see each employee’s rate go up approximately $200 per month to $930.
The county asked their brokers to look at other health insurance plans and Dan Snodgrass brought a proposal back to the board at last month’s meeting from United Healthcare which was approximately $100 below the Blue Cross Blue Shield quote.
At Tuesday morning’s committee meeting, some county employees did the math on the true savings the plan would present since the county reimburses the employees 100 percent of the costs. Turns out the $100 savings per month wasn’t a savings after all.
“The biggest difference was in the diagnostics, labs and x-rays,” County Board Chairman Andrea Schnelten said. “Under United Healthcare, the employee has to meet the deductible whereas with Blue Cross Blue Shield there is a $20 to $40 deductible for these procedures.”
Schnelten said the gals in the Health Department have done a lot of research on what the cost would be for her employees.
“We did some of the math so what it looks like is that individually you will save $98 per employee per month,” Public Health Administrator Molly Peters said. “But, because you are paying for things like mammograms, labs or anything that would go to a lab at 100 percent and not having a deductible, more people are going to likely meet the max deductible. United’s plan looks like you are going to save, but ultimately you are going to end up paying more.”
Schnelten said she was grateful for all of the legwork that the Health Department had done to uncover the true numbers.
“We did hear from the employees using the family plan,” Schnelten said. “I feel compelled that they are the ones who are seeing the costs of things because we don’t reimburse for that. They say they are going to see a significant increase and that tells me we would see an increase with United Healthcare.
“While I was excited to get a lower cost option per month, I don’t think it is worth it in the long run and, honestly, the prescription copay and labs scare me. While we don’t have a large percentage of employees who are sick, I think it is risky for us to switch at this point.”
Board Member Rob Hall pointed out that employees’ current doctors might not be in network if they switched to United Healthcare.
“It wouldn’t be a cost to us, but we could make a lot of employees unhappy if it turns out their doctor isn’t in the network,” he said. “Also, even though they get reimbursed, not everyone has the money on hand for the higher deductibles and copays. The emergency room is $200 higher.”
Board Member Mark Strang felt the employees should be contributing something to their own healthcare.
“When do we reach a point that we have our employees contribute to this,” he asked.
Schnelten said that the courthouse employees are contributing $30 a month to their health insurance but the other two unions were not willing to do that.
“In future negotiations, the new board members need to work towards that as a future negotiating chip,” Schnelten said.
Rick Ross made a motion to continue with Blue Cross Blue Shield and the motion passed unanimously.