During an emergency meeting Tuesday morning, the Marshall County Commissioners received information on the county’s health insurance.
Their current provider, Advantage is exiting the fully insured market place in Indiana at the end of the year forcing the county to seek a new insurance provider.
Ryan Colvin from Gibon said, “After approaching the marketplace when Advantage announced their decision we were pleasantly surprised with the options available.” He said two of the three carries offered 15 month proposals with fantastic coverage.
Offers came from United Health Care, Physicians Health Plan and Anthem. Colvin said there would be very minimal disruption to the plan designs in regard to deductibles and co-insurance. Each carrier made the attempt to align their plans as closely as they could with the current plan.
The two most competitive offers were from the Physicians Health Plan and Anthem and both have October 1st effective dates, basically 15 month contracts. The Anthem offer is lower than the county’s current rates but does not include any rate cap. The Anthem coverage does offer one of the broadest networks in the county, a nationwide network.
Physicians Health would pick up the county’s coverage at the current rates using the Select Health Care Network, the same the county currently has and put a rate cap for 2018 of no more than 10%.
United Health Care’s option came in just under current but Colvin said, “the recommendation would be to consider PHP or Anthem as the two most valuable options.”
After hearing from several employees who attended the emergency meeting the Commissioners unanimously voted to move forward with Anthem.
Currently the county’s annual payment to Advantage is $2,112,207.12 while the annual payment for Anthem will be $1,987,164.84 a savings of $125,000.
