County considers health insurance changes
Officials are exploring several cost-saving measures within the county budget and a major cost is employee health insurance. The county has been a part of the TAC health insurance pool for a number of years, so they called in TAC Employee Benefits Consultant
TAC has 241
For instance, she said the county paid about
Brandon said like many counties in the TAC pool,
"We're not even getting enough to cover the premium," Brandon said.
At the end of each year, TAC contracts with actuaries who help determine acceptable rates for the next year for each county. Using the trend, or what county's use of services the previous year would cost the upcoming year, TAC determined the trend was about 7 percent, so made their rate 7 plus just one more percentage point.
The TAC pool also benefits from surplus when TAC gathers more than they need. From 2013 through Wednesday, Brandon said TAC has given
Like more than 80 percent of TAC counties,
Brandon said TAC has about 30 plans to choose from, but brought numbers for four plans. She also explained a private exchange where employees could look at up to 10 plans.
She also said the county is free to shop for other insurance possibilities other than TAC, but it may involve going through a request for proposal process or forming an interlocal agreement with that group.
One more benefit of TAC is that they take into consideration demographics of the area as well as cost of care. Brandon said they found the county to be about 8.8 percent younger than average among counties, but has a whopping 18.9 percent higher cost of health services. She said this could be due to a lack of competition. She said in the future, employees might consider shopping around for doctors and services because a better rate may be possible closer to the
No decisions were finalized Wednesday, but one thing is for certain, change is coming to the county health insurance and it will probably mean more out-of-pocket costs to employees.
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