MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — Members of the Monongalia County Commission are openly concerned about the increasing costs of health insurance coverage for county employees and how it could affect the ability to absorb costs in the coming years.
Commissioners approved in a 2-0 vote (Commission President Jeff Arnett was unable to attend) to move forward with the proposal to have Highmark Blue Cross/Blue Shield as the primary provider of group employee health insurance offered to county employees, accounting for a cost increase of about 20.4 percent for the county. Commissioner Sean Sikora, along with Commissioner Tom Bloom, expressed open concern about the costs during the commission’s regular meeting Wednesday that will now increase by an extra $1 million that the county will now absorb.
“In order to keep the employee premiums consistent with where they are now, therefore, the commission would eat the potential $1,001,805 in additional premium costs,” said Sikora ahead of the approval of the insurance proposal.
According to both Commissioners Sikora and Bloom, the county will absorb the costs of all employee deductibles with a potential maximum cost of $900,000. This will cover increases in both single-person and family coverage, with single-payer deductibles rising from $6,000 to $7,000 and family coverage rising from $12,000 to $14,000. These increases in costs will be covered as part of a separate health reimbursement account (HRA) established by the county last year to cover over $4.9 million in insurance costs last year.
“We indicated that we have an increase in a deductible, that deductible goes to $7,000 for single employees, $14,000 for family, but it will all be covered out of the HRA,” said Sikora.
The new plan will also include an increase in co-pays for medical bills, where county employees will now have to pay twenty percent after meeting the deductible, doubled from the ten percent rate from last year. The decision to move forward with the county employee group insurance provider took place after months of negotiations, which originally started with the cost for premiums to be increased by approximately 34.8 percent. According to the commissioners, the trade-off for the increased co-pay for medical bills was done to avoid heavier increases to premiums that would’ve been tougher for the county to absorb in what is already a tough situation.
“Even if we kept it at the employees’ current levels, where we fund ninety-five percent of single employees and ninety percent of all other plans, they would’ve still had a 20.4 percent increase (in total costs),” said Sikora on the potential increase if co-pays stayed the same. “And if we shared, those numbers would’ve been a two hundred percent increase for single employees and one hundred percent for everybody else.”
Despite the decision to move forward with Highmark with the county covering the increased premium costs, both Sikora and Bloom emphasized that the current trend of increased premium costs will be unsustainable for the county moving forward. Based on current numbers, the commission will move forward with an overall spend of approximately $6 million of the $43.6 million budgeted for the county, with trends showing those numbers expected to only increase in the coming years. With the county budget on track to have over ten percent accounted for by insurance premiums, there’s an expectation that this issue won’t be put to rest anytime soon.
“I support this (because we have to) but this is not sustainable,” said Bloom. “This cannot continue, and that is why we are looking at other options and proposals as we move forward, and I think that’s very clear.”