Board of Aldermen 3-31-2020 Page 23
something to change our healthcare cost until either the State or more likely the Federal Government does
something to bring down the cost. So we have to do what we can do locally to do that. And | think this is a
pretty good proposal. It gives people a clear choice and you know it is unfortunate that we can’t keep things
the way they were, but it is just not sustainable unfortunately. And | would rather have all of these people
working as opposed to laying them off because we have to pay for the healthcare for some of them and lay
off the rest in order to do it. So for those reasons, | am going to support this proposal. Thank you.
President Wilshire
Thank you, Alderman Clemons. Next, we have Alderman Cleaver.
Alderman Cleaver
Thank you very much, a couple of questions. First of all, who are the providers besides Anthem and has
there been any shopping?
Larry Budreau, Human Resources Director
We moved to just one provider purposefully because last year we had two before, Harvard Pilgrim and
Anthem. We are self-funded; the City of Manchester and the City of Nashua are the only two self-funded
municipalities in the State because of our size. There are economies of scale that come from having just one
administrator instead of two. That may not answer all your questions just part of it.
Alderman Cleaver
The follow up is when is the last time we approached another provider for processing?
Larry Budreau, Human Resources Director
Oh I'll continue | forgot that. We did RFP’s just last, not for Fiscal 21 but for Fiscal 20. WBS the consultant
that Director Kleiner has mentioned a number of times this evening has done that for us. We usually do it
about every 3 years and Anthem was the best choice.
Mayor Donchess
Could | add to that answer? Keep in mind that we are self-insured so the City is paying the claims just out of
tax money. So we are not paying an insurance company to insure people, we are paying them only to
administer the claim. Either Ms. Kleiner or Mr. Budreau can correct me if I’m wrong on this figure, but out of
the approximately $50 million dollars we are projected to spend on healthcare, only like $1.2 is for
administration. So you know it’s 2% of the entire cost. So whether it goes up or down a little bit with the
administrator, obviously we want to save every dollar, but even if it goes up or down a bit on the
administrator, that being Anthem or someone else, it doesn’t really affect, because it is only 2% of the budget,
it doesn’t really affect the overall picture. In addition, we say an 11% increase but that was after we reduced
the number of administrators from 2 to 1 and thereby saved $400,000.00. So we think having a single
administrator is not the same as just having an insurance company that covers everybody. Again we are self-
insured so we are paying only for the administration of the claims. We are not paying Anthem for the claims
themselves; we are to provide the insurance.
Alderman Cleaver
Thank you very much. The next question is somebody or a family has medical issues early on, they could be
out $4,000.00 until they get $1,500.00 reimbursed on July 1 and then the following $1,500.00 October 1*. Do
| understand that correctly?
