Board of Aldermen 3-31-2020 Page 15
we may have exceeded the IRS limitation.
Earlier you had said and | think | may have missed part of your question but to confirm a couple points that
you made. Yes we had been marketing and this has been growing very successfully, we picked up over a
couple hundred people last year, we are now at 675 employees enrolled throughout the organization,
throughout the City and the School and obviously most of those are unionized employees because most of
our employees are. The Fire Department does have the highest percentage of people enrolled as that group.
We believe that’s because they have the opportunity at the Fire Stations to discuss these things and we’ve
seen now every new employee at the Fire House, they come back and when they sign their benefits they are
joining the health high deducible plan because their colleagues are imploring or not imploring but
recommending that they do. And in the Police Department there’s a craze going on, it feels like they are
highly enthusiastic and | believe that regardless of this Legislation and some regardless of what happens with
Unions, they are getting it. These plans cost everybody less money and so | think we are going to see a
surge on July 1* this year just because of all of this discussion. And if I’ve missed something and you want to
catch me while I’m still on please do.
Alderman Dowd
| think you’ve caught most of it. | have heard from some of the people in the education department and they
seem to think that the sales pitch to the teachers and staff has not been significant enough to change. So |
am not sure how we address that and give them more presentations. | think part of it is a trust factor. They
want to make sure that everything is ironclad and people are very subject to issues with changes as we’ve
found out with all the stuff going on lately. So | think once you get more and more people on, it'll snowball.
The question related to that is Manchester’s health insurance costs have only gone up 2% a year is that
because they are so far ahead of us? Nobody wants that question?
Kim Kleiner, Admin. Services Director
No I'll be happy to, so Workplace Benefit Solutions does work with the City of Manchester and they have
been actively moving people to the high deductible health plan for over four years now. So are they ahead of
us? Yes, they are ahead of us. Most of their School population is on the high deductible health plan. They
have certainly seem some benefits in savings from that. You know when we had Tom DeLacey from WBS
go over and meet with the Union Leadership, | think they were working on some ways that they could further
address teachers, you know, through their team leads and the Union Leadership and that might create that
trust that you were just speaking of, Alderman Dowd. But yes, the City of Manchester has realized savings
embarking on this type of worth.
Larry Budreau, Human Resources Director
I’m sorry | didn’t mean to interrupt you but | recalled that one of your concern or concern that had been
expressed to you was wondering how difficult it would be to access this second half of the contribution if
necessary. This is my most recent EOB, | received it earlier this week and at the bottom of it, it tells me how
much of my deducible | have reached. Our plan is to make this very simple and just show us a copy of that,
that shows that you have exceeded the $1,500.00 on your deductible spending thus far, it does have a little
provider information but | can block it with one finger, that’s not our interest. Just show evidence that you
have exceeded the $1,500.00 and we will pay the second half.
Alderman Dowd
OK my last question is | looked at the slope of one of the first charts you had Ms. Kleiner and that insurance
growth is, if it keeps going, it is going to take a significant chunk of our budget and we won’t have increases
for anything else. So not only do we have to work to lower that number but | am just wondering if we need to
take a one time hit and say we need a new baseline to work from, otherwise, we are never going to get there
