Vanderburgh County commissioners voted to extend the county’s contract with Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield, which offers coverage to non-union employees. The half-year plan comes with a five-percent increase in total costs.
The new plan will cost the county $11 million, according to estimates presented Tuesday afternoon.
The vote went pretty much without a hitch but discussion afterward became a little heated.
Commissioner Cheryl Musgrave wanted the county to look into shouldering all the costs of the Anthem plan.
Right now, the county pays only 90 percent of those costs.
The change would make the county's non-union health care benefits closer to its arrangement with unionized employees. The county already pays 100 percent of the costs of TeamCare, the health fund for union workers.
Musgrave asked for a financial impact statement to be presented at the next commissioners' meeting.
The county auditor said he needed the information by April 30 so the next meeting would be too late to make a decision that would change July payroll, when the new contract goes into effect.
Musgrave then made a motion to increase the county’s share of the Anthem plan to 100 percent, without commissioners first seeing a financial impact statement.
The motion didn’t receive a second.
Commissioner Jeff Hatfield said he’s not opposed but wants to see the numbers first, which the auditor will present at the next meeting.
"What's the rush?" Hatfield says. "The pressure to do it right now, it seems like we've got time."
Musgrave’s proposal comes as around 100 county employees in the clerk's and prosecutor's offices are unionizing, which Musgrave believes is solely because of health care costs.
Musgrave said it's not fair that union and non-union employers have the same employer but different arrangements to pay for health care coverage.
"This is an attempt to be fair," she says.
The commissioners have already set up a 15-member committee, which includes county employees, that's looking into whether the county should remain with Anthem once the next contract expires.