St. Paul Mayor says he won’t back $1.5 million supplemental insurance for retirees

The city of St. Paul won’t offer a supplemental health insurance plan for retirees as the Ramsey County board and St. Paul school board recently did.

Alarmed by an impasse between the HealthPartners health system and UnitedHealthcare over UHC’s many senior Medicare Advantage claim denials, the county board and school board recently voted to dig deep into reserve accounts and buy supplemental plans for their retirees, ensuring their continued access to Regions Hospital in St. Paul and other HealthPartners hospitals and clinics.

The city has no plan for such an option. St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter said this week that “Medigap” supplemental health insurance would cost the city up to $1.5 million, which is not in the mayor’s budget proposal.

“The city doesn’t have the $1.5 million these corporations are demanding at the eleventh hour to stop blocking our retirees from the doctors they’ve trusted for years,” said Carter, in a statement issued Monday. “This is a fight between two of the largest healthcare systems in the state; they must find a solution that releases our retirees and taxpayers from their crossfire.”

In discussions with the St. Paul Police Retirement Association and others last week during a meeting of the city’s labor management committee, a city benefits manager shared that the Medigap supplement plan was an option to consider.

That’s led some retirees to believe that the city planned to pay for it, which was shared widely by the St. Paul Police Retirement Association on its website last week. The mayor’s office emphasized Monday that’s not the case.

“I’ve got to do a retraction on my contact with my membership,” said Brad Jacobsen, secretary of the St. Paul Police Retirement Association, following the city’s health benefits presentation for retirees, which was held at the Lake Elmo Inn Event Center on Monday. “It was standing room only. It was just packed with people with walkers and canes. Everybody’s pissed off about the HealthPartners (conflict). She said, ‘Well, it was a proposal, but I never announced it at the committee (discussion).'”

“I think $1.5 million to solve this huge of a problem is a pretty reasonable price, and for him (the mayor) not to come up with it is pretty terrible,” Jacobsen added. “It blew me away.”

Another city health benefits presentation is planned at 10 a.m. Tuesday at the DoubleTree by Hilton at 2201 Burns Ave., and a third presentation is planned online on Oct. 22.

The mayor’s office said 1,000 of the 2,190 city retirees enrolled in city health insurance currently use HealthPartners/Park Nicollet as their provider. HealthPartners informed some 30,000 patients this summer that it would no longer accept UnitedHealthcare’s Medicare Advantage insurance next year, given a high number of claim denials and other conflicts with the private insurer, and that they would be considered out-of-network as of January.

The Bloomington-based health system also indicated that even patients willing to pay extra to continue to see their longtime doctors would be turned away. UnitedHealthcare, which is based in Minnetonka, has accused the health system of bluffing and using patients as leverage over health care reimbursements.

The two health care corporations have since met to negotiate, but with Medicare open enrollment running from Oct. 15 to Dec. 7, seniors who in many cases have met with their HealthPartners care team for years, if not decades, face pressure to decide whether to go out on their own and find a new insurance provider.

Usually, leaving an employer’s group plan in retirement means the worker cannot re-enroll in it, and benefits the worker has paid into for decades would be lost.

The Ramsey County board of commissioners voted 5-1 last week to use up to $1.2 million from an existing reserve fund — a payroll surcharge for post-employment benefits charged to each county department — to buy supplemental coverage for retirees who desire it, though premiums and deductibles would be higher than under their existing UHC Medicare Advantage plan.

Under the county’s newly-adopted proposal, Ramsey County retirees who opt for the pricier supplemental plan or another insurer would be able to switch back to the cheaper UHC Medicare Advantage program next year if the two sides reach an agreement by the end of the year.

The St. Paul School board members voted unanimously last week to use up to $3.5 million for their own “Medigap” supplemental plan. The mayor’s office has chosen not to go that route after conferring with the city benefits manager and labor relations manager about potential costs.

The mayor’s budget proposal, released in August, already calls for an 8% property tax increase, which the mayor and others have described as a difficult ask.

Carter’s office on Monday said in a written statement that the city should not be on the hook for “$1.5 million in unbudgeted payments from St. Paul taxpayers to continue their access to the same doctors they’ve trusted under these same systems for years.”

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