By Amy Eddings
News that the Village of Ada is facing a 19% increase in its employee health insurance premiums went down like cod liver oil at Tuesday night’s council meeting at the village’s offices.
Council members and Mayor David Retterer expressed dismay and alarm at Anthem’s new rates. Under the terms of the renewal, an unmarried Ada village employee with no children would see his or her rate go from $448 a month to $532 a month. A married village employee with two children would see their monthly cost jump from $1,382 to $1,642.
“We budgeted for a 10% increase,” council member and Personnel Committee Chairwoman Cathy Cole told Retterer, village administrators and fellow council members. She presided over a hastily-called committee meeting after the regularly-scheduled council meeting to update council members on their options. “Do we want to keep the current plan? If so, how are we going to fund it?”
In a memo, the village’s insurance broker, Daryl Steiner of Steiner Financial Services in Bluffton, recommended that Ada stay with Anthem, saying it would be even costlier to switch to another provider because of new requirements under the Affordable Care Act.
Those requirements include mandatory pediatric dental coverage for those employees with dependents under the age of 18, estimated at around $200 dollars a month, and higher rates for smokers.
Steiner estimated that “smoker surcharge” could add 10% to 50% to an employee’s premium. Add to those additional fees the higher deductibles offered in ACA-compliant Gold, Silver and Bronze insurance plans, and non-smoking family of four on a mid-level Silver Plan could see health care costs of “$21,000 to $24,000 per year before anything is paid by the carriers,” said Steiner.
“It’s getting so that [they] get more in health care than they do in wages,” said council member Don Fleming.
All health insurance plans must conform to the Affordable Care Act provisions by October, 2017. Council members realized that, if they were to chose to stay with Anthem for the time being, they were just putting off the inevitable.
“In two years, we’re going to have a big problem,” said council member Jeff Oestreich. “Everybody is.”
“Maybe it’s 19% because [Anthem] knows they’ve got us for a year or two,” said Mayor Retterer.
In his memo, Steiner did not explain why Anthem’s increase was so high. Council members say that last year, Anthem’s premium costs climbed 14%.
One option for the village is to stop providing health insurance altogether. With fewer than 50 employees, it could do that without incurring any penalties, sending its 21 insured workers to the Federal Market Place Exchange to buy their own plans.
Depending on their incomes, Ada’s workers could find federally-subsidized coverage there. They couldn’t get any subsidy from the village itself, though. Obamacare rules prevent that. Any boost in wages to offset the loss of health insurance could also jeopardize an employee’s ability to qualify for the subsidized rate.
More vexing to council members than the health insurance dilemma was the fact that Steiner couldn’t be there at the meeting to help them make a decision. Cole told her colleagues that Steiner was out of state, getting training, and would not be available until after Oct. 27.
That’s just four days before new enrollment forms would be due, should the village decide to dump Anthem and embrace ACA standards early. If the village sticks with Anthem and its 19% increase, it has more time. The deadline to renew the current contract is Dec. 1.
Cole has called for additional personnel committee meetings before the end of the month.
Despite all the uncertainty expressed in the meeting, Cole was clear about one thing: “I don’t know if the Affordable Care Act is affordable for anybody,” she said.
PHOTOS BELOW: Ada village council member Cathy Cole goes over health insurance costs with council member Terry Keiser. Photo: Amy Eddings.
Ada Mayor David Retterer (fifth from left) questions personnel committee chairwoman Cathy Cole (far left) about 19% health insurance rate increase. Photo: Amy Eddings.
