By COLE REIF
Great Bend Post
The Great Bend City Council was faced with a 28.8% increase to their 2023 health insurance rates from Blue Cross Blue Shield (BCBS) at Monday’s meeting. Instead
of approving the rates, the city council voted 5-0 to send the city’s health
insurance provider out for bids.
Great Bend Human Resources Director Randy Keasling said city staff budgeted for
a 7% increase to health insurance premiums for employees and the city,
but expected a significantly higher contribution for staff in 2024.
"During the pandemic, no one was going to the doctor," said Keasling. "We have not raised rates for staff for three years. That's come to an end. We budgeted a 7-percent increase. We're going to watch this very closely. We all feel like it's going to be a pretty significant increase next year."
Keasling said this year and last year were tough on the city as far as high
utilization of health insurance claims, with catastrophic events happening.
"We have healthy reserves," said Keasling. "We want to make sure we keep healthy reserves."
Great Bend’s Blue Cross Blue Shield representative Claudio Faundez said it
never hurts to shop around, but getting a similar health plan will be based on the
same claim numbers that Blue Cross uses.
"When you go look at other carriers and how they quote it, they are going to ask us for history," said Faundez. "Whenever they ask Randy, he's going to give me a call and ask if we can provide claims history. We will provide that, and that is what other carriers are going to base their projections off of. Exactly what we do. I don't expect that to be much different."
Great Bend scheduled open enrollment for its employees at the end of October,
but will now research to get more information on different providers’ rates.
The city's health insurance is self-funded, but administered through Blue Cross Blue Shield. Great Bend pays 83% of each employee's premium, with the employee paying 17%. All the claims are paid from the self-funded plan, but the city pays an administrative fee to BCBS.