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MORGANTOWN - You know costs are out of control when you're happy to report that you're paying 18% more for something than you did a year ago.
That's the position the Monongalia County Commission has found itself in regarding employee health insurance costs.
The commission Wednesday approved the contribution strategy through which it will pay about $7 million into individual employee healthcare plans for the 2027 coverage year.
This time last year, the commission initiated a dramatic shift in the way it offered health insurance - moving away from a traditional group healthcare plan to an Individual Coverage Health Reimbursement Arrangement, or ICHRA.
Doing so decoupled the county's overall insurance cost from its group history, which was driving steep increases year over year. Under the ICHRA setup, the commission provides each employee an allowance based on age and other circumstances of the employee and insured family members. The employee then works individually with an advisor through the county's administrator, Remodel Health, to shop the market.
Taking lessons from its first year utilizing the ICHRA strategy, the commission fine-tuned the factors upon which it calculates individual employee allocations, eliminating assumptions for things like the age of an employee's spouse in favor of actual data.
"Across the board, the way we modeled this; this is based off our current plans that our employees have because this commission truly believes that if people like the plan they ought to be able to keep it. So, we're trying to make that possible," Commissioner Sean Sikora said.
To get there, given significant healthcare premium increases for the 2027 plan year, the commission increased its contribution total by about $1 million.
Even so, there will be cost increases on the employee end for 124 of the county's 265 employees. For 20 employees, that increase will be greater than $100 monthly ($212.30 average monthly increase). A total of 96 employees will see no change and 45 employees will realize a savings ($236.77 average monthly decrease).
"But what our employees are still armed with is they can also go in and adjust their plans for whatever their needs are. If their needs are specific coverage and they want to pay an additional amount for that coverage, they can do that. If their needs are not having a withholding at all, they can adjust that way," Sikora said, later adding, "Ultimately, it's up to our employees. They have ultimate control."
While the commission has admitted there have been some bumps in the transition from a group plan to individual coverage, all three agree it was the right decision.
It was noted Wednesday that the county would likely be looking at a 40% cost increase - to just over $9.3 million - were it still under a group plan.
"We took a lot of criticism for making the bold move to take this individual coverage step. It's shown to be more responsive to our employees and more responsive to the allowances that we should be providing our employees so they can make their own choices in the market," Sikora said.