The City of Indianola was not the only one to get hit with a health insurance rate hike.
In like manner, the Sunflower County lawmakers were informed on Monday that their premium cost per employee has made a jump. The county's agent, Tim Holifield, BXS Insurance, said, "We received a 30%rate increase from Blue Cross. That's going from $489 to $636 per employee. That is a pretty good whack."
Holifield said they compared several options before presenting to the board members and of those they checked Humana wasn't a viable choice because they don't have a strong enough network and United Healthcare originally declined to make a quote, but later chose to do so.
Nevertheless, according to Holyfield, United Healthcare’s price was not any less than Blue Cross Blue Shield.
He said that even though United Healthcare offered a variety of "out of the box thinking" type plans, they were not a practical choice. "We would have to get so creative with the plans by putting per occurrence deductible, per occurrence co-pays on like in-patient, a co-pay every day you're in the hospital and all that does is transfer money from here straight to the employees," he said.
After listening to Holifield and co-worker Dianne Stewart's presentation, the county leaders opted on a majority 3-1 vote to stay with BCBS on the recommendation of Holifield. District 3 Supervisor Ben Gaston voted no.
“I just like to chew on things a little bit longer than y'all did,” Gaston said.
District 1 Supervisor Glenn Donald made the motion to continue with BSS insurance and Blue Cross Blue Shield.
Holifield attempted to explain what he believed to be the logic behind the insurance company's decision to raise the rates.
"The reason Blue did this is we are running 145%. For every $1 you're paying in premiums, they're paying $1.45 in claims."
He said the county’s medical rate history has been fairly level over the previous years, but this year it spiked.
Holifield said, “Blue Cross is not trying to penalize you, (or) get all of their money back. They've outspent what you paid on this. That's not their goal, their goal is to make it appropriately rated for the risk moving forward.”
In other business,
Referencing a request from Judge Carol White Richard, Circuit Clerk Carolyn Hamilton sought and got approval to make modifications to the circuit court room. The upgrade is to include installing plexiglass and replacing the stationary chairs in the jury box with non-stationary chairs.
The proposed expenditures are to be reimbursed through the Administrative Office of Courts; so, the county leaders authorized Hamilton and Washington to spend the necessary funds.
They also granted Hamilton permission to pay the necessary expenses for her deputy clerks to travel to Leflore County for a murder trial that was granted a change of venue, plus pay the other expenses associated with that case.
They also approved the tax collector/assessor's tax assessor delinquency and insolvency reports pending receipt of the necessary affidavit.
