By John Estridge
Union County Commissioners decided to go with a new company for health insurance and apparently saved around $140,000 annually in the change.
Two bids were opened at the Friday morning, August 7, meeting. One was from the current health insurance company, VanVleet Insurance of Richmond, and the other bid was from RMD Patti, also of Richmond. However, RMD Patti has offices in Liberty and Winchester also.
After representatives from both companies made their pitches, the two commissioners present, Tim Williams and Howard Curry – president Paul Wiwi attends via speaker phone during the pandemic – began using calculators, pens and papers doing what Wiwi said was the important part: What is the increase (or decrease) from last year?
Union County Council begins its annual budgetary process in a couple of weeks, and the health insurance component is one of the biggest costs for the county. Councilman Jeff Adams was in the masked audience to watch the situation unfold.
RMD Patti’s No. 1 option would cost $357,994.08 while VanVleet’s option two was priced at $500,629.60.
RMD Patti said they were hampered in giving an estimate for the health insurance because the county’s claim history was not released until Thursday, August 6. Thus, Williams added 20 percent to RMD Patti’s original bid. And that was the $357,944.08 figure.
VanVleet’s numbers were a 0.8 percent increase over last year’s figures.
Wiwi asked Williams to figure out the monthly bill for the two plans. According to Williams, it is $919.77 and some change per employee per month with the VanVleet quote and $662.95 per month per employee for the RMD Patti plan. This is a savings of $256.88 a month per employee, Williams said.
Auditor Cheryl Begley said with the current plan, there have been few if any complaints about the insurance coverage, and that has not always been the case when other companies were in charge of the health insurance. She also said nothing personally has been out-of-network with the current plan.
Curry said the county was gambling for a $140,000 per-year savings.
According to RMD Patti representatives, one of the ways county employees can fill prescriptions is through George’s Family Pharmacy, which is based in Batesville but has drug stores in Brookville and Connersville. Also, George’s has a large delivering network. Many of the prescriptions through George’s are free, they said. However, employees can use local drug stores to fill their prescriptions.
The vote was unanimous for RMD Patti. RMD Patti officials said they will get the final figures in a couple of weeks. The motion said the RMD Patti final figure cannot go past the $357,994.08.
Williams said the savings for the county is $256.88 per month per employee. That amounts, according to Williams, to $11,056 per month and $138,682 per year.