ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, June 25, 1996 TAG: 9606250092
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
DATELINE: BEDFORD
SOURCE: RICHARD FOSTER AND JENNIFER MILLER STAFF WRITERS
The Bedford County School Board ended a health insurance crisis for county employees Monday, but not the way workers had been hoping.
Voting unanimously, the School Board opted not to enter into a joint health plan with the county. The decision by the school board not to join meant county employees faced up to a 54 percent increase in health insurance rates.
"I just hate to tell my people about this," said County Commissioner of Revenue Faye Eubank, who left the School Board meeting Monday visibly upset by the decision.
But less than a hour later, the tension subsided for Eubank when the Board of Supervisors voted to help county employees by increasing the county's monthly share of health care costs from $130 per worker to $216.
The School Board's decision not to enter the joint health plan could have meant that county workers' cost for family coverage would have climbed from $316 to $489 a month. With the extra money from the Board of Supervisors, those county employees will now see an smaller increase, to $408 - about 30 percent.
The Board of Supervisors also said it would try to seek adjusted rates from its new health care provider, Mid-Atlantic Medical Services Inc., that could mean slightly higher rates for single-employee coverage but lower rates for those with families.
"Anything and everything we can do, we need to do it," Supervisor Roger Cheek said. "I've spoken to some of our employees, and they can't handle it."
Out of 250 county employees, 170 have their health insurance through the county. Twenty-four of those employees are on the family plan.
Some like Mary Caldwell, a custodian with the county, don't have health insurance at all. She has three children and a husband, who is disabled. Her children are covered through Medicaid. She brings home $800 a month; if she were to pay the $408 a month for health insurance, she said, "I couldn't make my house payment."
Sheriff Mike Brown said, "It's beyond words to think of what people will have to resort to to live." For some of his deputies with families, the increase will mean take-home pay of about $14,000 before taxes.
The health insurance crisis began in May when Trigon Blue Cross Blue Shield, which was the provider for the county and the school system, announced it would raise county employee rates by 60 percent because of a high number of expensive, long-term illnesses among county employees.
The county then decided to purchase its insurance through a pool plan set up by the Virginia Association of Counties.
School system employees, who will stay with Trigon, will see about a 16 percent increase in their health care rates. If the School Board had joined the county in its new policy with Mid-Atlantic, school employees' rates would have increased only 9 percent.
School Board members said the decision wasn't that easy, however.
School employees are now paying $116 a month in out-of-pocket health insurance costs. Starting next month, they'll pay $135. That's only $8 more a month than their rates would have been if they had joined the county's new plan.
When $8 is the difference between staying with a known health care provider and going with a new company, the School Board members said, they would rather stay with the company they know.
"If we switched companies and had a bad year, we wouldn't have a backlog of experience with the new company to show that it wasn't an average year. What would happen to our rates then?'' School Superintendent John Kent asked. He also was concerned because Bedford County would be the first and only county in Virginia to join the plan so far.
School Board member Wesley Gordon called it "the toughest decision I've had to agonize over on my short time on the board." Like many on the board, he said that, given Trigon's July 1 renewal deadline, there just wasn't enough time to make a proper decision.
Nevertheless, School Board members are receptive to the idea of a joint health care plan in the future. Both the Board of Supervisors and the School Board agreed to form a committee to discuss a joint plan for 1997-98.
LENGTH: Medium: 80 linesby CNB