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County's union workers eye new health plan

By Melanie Lekocevic

CATSKILL — A proposed switch in health insurance coverage for the county’s union employees could save Greene County $1 million next year, and would shave the proposed tax hike in half. But first, union workers have to give the proposal the thumbs up.

In a series of meetings with employees this week, Interim County Administrator Dan Frank and members of the Greene County Legislature have been explaining the health insurance carrier that is under consideration — Empire Blue Cross EPO — and pitching the idea to the employees who are expected to vote on it next week with their unions’ bargaining units.

“We have been working on this since January 2008. Currently, the county has four different health plans with different sets of rates and different renewal rates,” Frank told workers at the meeting at Catskill High School. “We want to make this simpler and better for the taxpayers, for the county and for the employees, and we have put together a package that worked out well for all sides.”

Right now, county employees are eligible for coverage under one of four health insurance plans — GHI, MVP, Empire Blue PPO or the most popular, CDPHP. All but Empire are HMOs, which cost less in premiums but have a more limited choice of physicians and other health care providers in their networks.

Now, the county wants to pull all workers under one big umbrella, with everyone’s coverage through Empire Blue Cross, either in their PPO or EPO. PPO stands for “preferred provider organization” and EPO is “exclusive provider organization.” Both have extensive network health care providers nationwide, but under the PPO the employee would also have the option of seeing a provider who is not in the network, and would get some of the bill covered. The EPO does not offer that option.

Under HMOs, though, the network is much smaller — mostly local physicians and providers — and it has the most limited options.

With the county’s proposal, all workers would be in either the Empire Blue PPO or EPO, and because so many would be enrolled in one plan, that would bring significant savings over the other companies’ 2009 rate increases.

“We came up with a plan to take everyone in the HMOs and move them to the Blue Cross EPO,” Frank said. “We believe the EPO stacks up considerably better than HMOs. We think we are giving you a much better health plan at no additional cost, and some employees may even have to pay less.”

Karen Landau, the health insurance consultant hired by the county to review the proposals, examined all four plans, and according to her analysis, Empire offers service as good or better than GHI, MVP or CDPHP in most areas. There are some minor differences, like one-time $15 co-pays for some doctor visits.

Landau said they also looked at how the provider networks fared, and the vast majority of physicians and other providers in the HMO plans are also in Empire’s network.

“The county was very sensitive in looking at how this proposed change would affect our employees and their families, and how much provider disruption there would be,” Frank said.

The legislature began considering other health insurance options because of the steep hikes the current companies will be charging in 2009, which will cost an additional $1 million in next year’s budget. And with the proposed tax levy increase of 11 percent, officials were looking for ways to cut costs. The health insurance jump accounted for nearly 5.8 percent of that total increase.

That’s because GHI’s coverage will cost 12 percent more in 2009 than it did in 2008, and CDPHP, which is by far the most popular plan among employees, will jump by 14.2 percent. “We are getting hammered in our expenses to maintain our work force,” Frank said. “If we adopt this health plan change, we are planning to pass those cost savings on to the taxpayers, and cut the tax levy in half.”

The county’s 2009 budget will not be adopted until a decision on health care carriers is made. Union workers are expected to vote on the proposal next week.

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