Town employees will stay with Fallon

Selectmen mull health insurance rates

From the Worcester Telegram & Gazette, April 4, 2008

By Donna Boynton TELEGRAM & GAZETTE STAFF

GRAFTON— The town has decided to remain with Fallon Health Care as the insurance provider for town employees, and selectmen must now decide on a rate plan. That decision will determine who pays more — the taxpayers or town employees.

The town has been with Fallon for only six months and presently 80 percent of the town’s employees — or 133 families — are covered by a rate plan that offers between a $5 and $10 co-pay. Selectmen are considering a plan that increases the co-pay to between $10 and $20.

The town’s Insurance Advisory Committee issued a report earlier this year, after examining comparable plans, and recommended that the town remain with the “status quo” plan that the employees are covered by now.

To stay with the current plan, the town would have to pay a 14.47 percent — or $478,000 — increase. By accepting a plan with a higher co-pay, the town will have only a 7.7 percent increase, which is about $275,000.

According to Fallon, as presented at the selectmen’s meeting earlier this week, the increase in costs is based on the true medical costs to the providers, and about 92 percent of every dollar goes into paying claims.

Part of preventing cost increases, explained the town’s consultant, Ginger Hastings of GBS Insurance Agency, will be teaching employees when to go to the emergency room and how to use generic drugs.

The selectmen, given the financial effect that their decision will have, will consider the plans and decide whether to keep the “status quo” plan with the lower co-pay, or to raise the co-pay on April 15.

The Insurance Advisory Committee considered a number of plans before recommending that the town remain with Fallon.

Among those plans was the Government Insurance Corporation health insurance plans. The committee found the co-pays substantially different from Fallon, and enrolling would require a three-year commitment. The rates for fiscal 2009 were not available, but the committee will again consider GIC for fiscal 2010.

Collective purchasing health coverage through the West Suburban Health Group was not advantageous to the town because the premiums were too high, according to the committee’s report.