Youngstown city employee health insurance changes go into effect Friday

April 30--YOUNGSTOWN -- City council approved significant changes to employee health insurance, including having workers pay medical deductibles for the first time and giving options as to cost and coverage of various plans.

Council voted 7-0 on the changes Wednesday. The board of control will take the last step today when it gives its approval to the policy that takes effect Friday.

"If you want more coverage, you can pay more," said Mayor John A. McNally. "If you want less coverage, you can pay less."

Among the key changes recommended by a 17-member management-employee health-insurance review committee is going to a tier policy, said city Law Director Martin Hume.

There used to be plans for employees only and for a worker's entire family.

The new policy will include two other options for family coverage -- employee/spouse and employee/children.

Those policies are less expensive than a full family plan.

For the first time, city employees will pay deductibles. The higher the deductible, the less expensive the plan.

One plan has deductibles of $250 a person and up to $500 a family; another is $500 and $1,000, respectively, and a health savings account option has deductibles of $2,600 and $5,200, respectively.

With the changes, the city's health-insurance policy with Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield will increase by 4.7 percent compared with the expiring plan. That could be lower if more people opt for a less-expensive plan.

The new policy will cost, at most, $11,865,468.

The expiring plan is $11,329,126, and if no changes were made, it would have gone up to $12,686,995, a 13-percent increase.

The city pays 90 percent of the health-insurance plan with employees paying the rest.

The city has about 720 employees, with 657 using the city's health-insurance plan.

Of those, 208 are single, 90 would use the employee/spouse plan, 123 would use the employee/children plan, and 263 would use the full family plan, according to data provided to the city from Anthem.

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