06-07-07 Chapter 172 Employee Retiree Insurance and Benefits Board Meeting

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We received five (5) proposals and wanted to make sure the Board Members of Chapter 172 were totally involved in the process of evaluating proposals received. Also, to make sure you would have a full understanding of all of the components used to evaluate the proposals and make a good recommendation to Council. It is also critical that you have a process that allows you to bring different perspectives of the impact on both active and retired employees. To start this process we wanted to have our resident Insurance consultants from HRH, Neal Welch and Kathy Clark come out and provide details about the different components that you will be looking at to evaluate the proposals received. We also will pass out tentative timelines that will include dates for recommendations to Council, provide information to employees and retirees, Open Enrollment and insurance implementation. Presentation from Neal Welch HRH Consultant regarding the background of the City of La Porte's insurance plan: We have a Self Insured Health Plan and we hire an Administrator in this case, it is the Insurance Company, Humana. This is the third year of a three year contract. They administer the plan the only difference is we (the City of La Porte) holds the risk instead of Humana. In return we get to make a lot more of the rules that are in the plan. We don't have to pay commissions, taxes, fees and licenses. Humana receives a fee per employee, per month from the City of La Porte to administer the plan that we jointly come up with to cover active employees and retirees. When we say we are putting the Health Plan out for bid essentially what we are doing is not just looking for a healthcare premium because we establish the premium ourselves and what we charge ourselves, active employees and retirees for the coverage. Weare shopping all of the components of what would be included in the healthcare program. I will pass these out to you now so you can see what those components include. To choose the company we will be using next year we use a combination of investigating, scoring, evaluating, interviewing and seeing what will best fit for the employees and retirees of the City of La Porte. Question from Chapter 172 member Karen Beerman: Is the EAP contract tied to the Health Insurance with Humana? It is a very good benefit. Response from Robert Swanagan: No, the UT Employee Assistance Program is a separate program from the Health Insurance and has a separate contract.