RASD renews health insurance, hopes to lower premiums

The Ripon Area School District (RASD) will continue to give employees medical and pharmacy benefits through WEA Trust through the 2022-23 school year.

That’s after the Ripon School Board last week Thursday voted unanimously to renew with WEA Trust for medical insurance for an additional year, as well as offer voluntary vision insurance and give cash in lieu of benefits to aides.

RASD currently is fully insured for medical and pharmacy benefits through WEA Trust. In the 2019-20 school year, the district switched from WCA insurance in order to reduce premiums by 6.3%, according to a district memo.

After making the change, WEA Trust premiums increased 10.5% in 2020-21, 9.8% in 2021-22 and RASD received a renewal proposal of roughly 3.6% for 2022-23.

“As the district looks toward a significant loss of revenue in the 2023-2024 school year (estimated to be $1.4 million), district administrators are attempting to make decisions that will create savings to reduce staff layoffs,” the memo said. “Although the district administration believes that self-funding medical insurance is a good long-term goal, the additional financial risk of self-funding does not warrant a switch for the 2022-2023 school year.”

RASD plans to take steps to lower premiums and expected claims by:

‰ Increase primary care visit, chiropractic, phys/occ/speech therapy copayments from $30 to $35;

‰ Increase specialist care visit copayments from $60 to $70;

‰ And increase the embedded out-of-pocket maximum for the district from $6,500 single/ $13,000 family to $7,350 single/ $14,700 family.

“This plan[ned] change will lower medical premiums by 1%, but will increase district secondary HRA (health reimbursement arrangement) payments [by] an unknown amount,” the memo said. “Additionally, the district will no longer offer the buy-up medical plan, with $1,000 single/ $2,000 family deductibles.”

According to the district, the change could save the district about $18,000 in premiums and it could save members $86,000 in premium savings by selecting a less expensive plan.

RASD also hopes to begin progress toward renovating a room at Ripon Middle School to become an “on-site clinic for staff and community members,” which could open by January 2023.

The School Board asked administrators to work to offer consistent benefits, the memo stated.

In response, the district proposed voluntary cash payouts in lieu of medical insurance benefits of $3,000 to 9-month staff, who have not been eligible for that benefit previously.

“Estimated expenses for expanding the cash-in-lieu benefit vary based on eligible staff members’ decisions,” the memo said. “In the worst-case scenario, no staff members change their current plan choices.

“This scenario would cost $30,000, with 10 staff members receiving new compensation. In a better scenario, the number of staff members who decline expensive medical coverage would make up for the new costs of the ABP (alternative benefit plan) benefit. For example, if two staff on the medical plan ($20,500 district expenses each) chose to not take medical insurance, and 10 additional staff members took the ABP benefit, the net savings for the distinct would be $5,000.”