City’s health insurance cost remains stable

Oct. 04--The city of Joplin's self-funded insurance plan has experienced a good claims year.

Kimberly Wixson of Seagal Consulting, the company that assists city administrators with contracting for employee insurance, told the Joplin City Council on Monday night that she had good news.

"The city has experienced an operating surplus in fiscal 2017 and year-to-date in 2018" in its self-funded insurance. "We experienced really positive claims experience last year, and we are continuing to experience a nice operating surplus this year," Wixson said.

Rates for insurance coverage will mostly continue at the same price for 2019 that they did this year. The premium for life insurance that the city provides as part of its benefit package will increase $5,000, but medical, prescription drug, dental and vision insurance will remain unchanged in price.

Rates for additional life insurance and accidental death and dismemberment insurance that employees buy also will remain the same.

The city pays all of the premium for medical and prescription coverage for employees. Three-fourths of the cost of family coverage is paid by the city. The city provides 70 percent of the cost for single dental coverage and 65 percent of family coverage.

A contract with Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield provides medical and prescription insurance.

Life insurance at 1.5 times the annual salary of an employee is provided by the city. Employees can buy more coverage at their own cost. Vision insurance also is provided at no charge to employees.

City costs monthly for the medical coverage are $472.32 per employee for single-person coverage and $991.88 for family. Employees pay $330.64 for the family medical insurance.

Dental insurance costs the city $20 for month for single coverage and $49.40 for families. Employees pay $8.58 for single and $26.60 for family dental coverage per month.

Because the premiums for the coverages will remain flat next year, the city's share of the costs will not increase.

The city will pay more than $4.521 million into the insurance fund this year for employee coverage. Employees will pay $1.166 million, and retiree and COBRA contributions will amount to about $108,000. Because health and prescription premiums remain the same, the same will be paid in next year.

Total income is projected next year is projected to be more than $5.8 million and expenses $5.772 million.

The fund is expected to see an operating surplus this year of about $697,000. The fund's reserve surplus this year will be about $974,000. It is recommended that the fund have a surplus that could cover 4.1 months of claims but the balance is enough to cover 6.1 months, Wixson said.

Leslie Haase, the city's finance director, said the city switched to a self-funded plan in 2011 because of double-digit increases experienced in the insurance market.

The nine-year trend for cost increases averaged 5.6 percent for the city while the national trend for the same time was 7.3 percent increase, Haase told the council.

"So we continue to beat the national trends," she said. "I like to see us beating the national trends. I think that it means we're doing well."

While the city has seen lower claim years and resulting costs in recent years, a high claims year is inevitable with the number of people covered by the plan.

"The importance of the reserves and adding to the surplus is that our goal is to use those reserves to help buy down any of the large increases when we have the bad years," Haase said. "So it's good news that we are adding to our surplus" to reduce increases from double digits.

Councilman Jim West asked what is considered a bad year.

Haase said that the plan experienced an increase of 11.7 percent one of the last nine years. That type of increased cost, or any increase above the national trend, is considered a bad year, she said.

The city also pays for stop-loss insurance so that the insurer rather than the plan pays out for claim amounts larger than $150,000.

Plan numbers

There are 1,200 people insured on the city's plan. More than 500 are employees, and the others are family members.

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