The V.I. Health Insurance Board is trying to avoid substantially higher premiums for government employees by restructuring coverage, but it is running out of time.
The government's contract with Blue Cross/Blue Shield (also known as QCC) was up for renewal Sept. 30. To cover losses in the previous year, the company announced premiums will be increased if coverage remains the same. Conventional medical coverage is going up by 22.74 percent – from a total of $36 million to $44 million, and conventional dental coverage is increasing by 38.93 percent, from $2.9 million annually to $4 million, according to Paulette Rabsatt, chairman of the Health Insurance Board.
The government now picks up 66 percent of the cost for health insurance. Employees pay the other 34 percent. Approximately 12,000 government employees and their families are covered under the plan.
QCC agreed to extend the coverage for three months until Dec. 31, while the two sides try to negotiate a new plan to avoid an increase in premiums, Rabsatt said. But meanwhile, the increase is being paid at the same 66/34 split as the old contract and coverage has not changed.
A new agreement needs approval first by Gov. Charles W. Turnbull and then the Legislature. According to an announcement last week, the Legislature is trying to adjourn by Dec. 12 to make way for the new Legislature to take office in January.
"We don't have free time here," Rabsatt said. "We've been trying to stay on top of the carrier" to provide adjustments to the coverage that could lower the premiums.
She declined to discuss details of options under consideration, saying "some things are just not going to be considered by us as feasible options but they're on the table." However she did note that when the first QCC plan period ended March 30, 1999, there was a surplus, and the board distributed it to government employees by structuring the new plan with a lower deducible. The deductible went from something over $200 to just $50.
"It was a generous" decrease, she said. But with the plan paying out more than it took in last year "we can't afford" that generosity now.
Urged by its Economic Recovery Task Force, the Turnbull administration has proposed 50-50 cost sharing plans with government workers for government benefits, but that does not appear to be under consideration in the current negotiations over health insurance. Rabsatt said the Legislature already has signaled its rejection of the idea.
The board is dealing strictly with the current carrier, QCC.
After the government went down to the wire and beyond into a disputed extension of coverage in 1999 trying to find a new carrier, the Legislature passed a law saying that health insurance contracts must be negotiated at least six months before old contracts expire.
Although the current contract has been extended now for three months, it actually expired Sept. 30. It was impossible for the Health Insurance Board to meet a six-month deadline before Sept. 30, Rabsatt said, because the board didn't even have a quorum until May.
