Sep. 14—City of Oneonta officials have proposed joining the Cayuga County health insurance consortium, a move that would change city employees' health plans from a zero deductible but would eliminate co-pays after the deductible is reached.
The Common Council's finance committee decided Thursday to move forward with the proposal.
City Administrator Greg Mattice said that the city's health care task force and the city's health insurance broker, USI, have been looking into other options, including having preliminary conversations with the Cayuga County consortium.
"They are open to having the city of Oneonta join their consortium," Mattice said. "We're recommending joining that, and switching to what is actually a high deductible health plan, which would be fully funded in the sense that the deductible for in-network costs would be funded by the city. There is no out-of-pocket costs going toward the in-network deductible coming from an employee."
A deductible is the amount an insurance holder pays out-of-pocket for covered health care services before insurance starts to pay. After the deductible has been reached, the insurance holders usually pay only a co-payment or co-insurance with the insurance company picking up the rest.
There are low and high deductible plans. Low-deductible plans have a lower threshold to reach before the insurance kicks in. Insurance holders pay less money upfront for medical costs, but pay more for monthly premiums.
High-deductible plans have higher out-of-pocket maximums, but the benefit of a lower monthly premium.
Healthy people may go with a high-deductible plan to save money month to month, but a low-deductible plan means you generally won't be stuck with high medical bills after a health emergency event.
According to a benefit outline by USI presented to the committee, the deductible would be $7,500 for an individual and $15,000 for a family.
"If that sounds high, it is," City Human Resources Director Joseph Temming said, "and the reason why is that it helps draw down the premium costs."
The city would also do a health reimbursement arrangement.
"What we're doing is essentially ensuring the HRA deductible piece of it," Temming said, "so that there will be no cost to the employees. They will not need to pay deductibles."
The city is proposing staying with Excellus BlueCross BlueShield. The underlying PPO plan would be the current plan that the city offers to most employees, so the benefits there would remain the same.