County Budget-Writers Relieved as Health Coverage Rates Stabilize
"We're just grateful to have a break in our insurance rates this year," said county commissioner
Between 2017 and 2019,
"It's a really nice surprise to see those level off a bit, because we've seen major increases in health insurance in the last 10 years," said Budget Manager
On Monday, Jackson told his fellow commissioners that rates from the
That's significant because massive spikes in WCIF's coverage costs triggered budget issues at the county in recent years. That program was on an unsustainable path, Jackson said, with rate hikes as high as 70 percent looming. Amid that crisis,
Shifts like that have allowed WCIF to get back on track, Jackson said.
"We were concerned that it was going to take us two or three years to recover from that," he said. "As it turned out, within a year, once those groups were out, things began to turn around quite a bit. They turned around a lot quicker than we anticipated."
Meanwhile, the PEBB insurance that now covers most county employees is anticipated to go up about 3 percent, Butler said, a manageable number. The official rate will come out in September. Another 167 county employees are covered through
"This is the best place we've been in awhile," Jackson said. "It is good news. We were pretty excited about that."
Butler noted that as insurance rates have leveled off, the risk pool for the county's general liability coverage has climbed steeply.
"We've got one up, one down," she said.
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