Openings

This is the text of a presentation the GTFF gave to the UO to open bargaining. This info informed our coming proposal:

Two decisions we made last year impact this year’s bargaining.
• The UO agreed to contribute an additional $250K to increase the maximum benefit cap.
• We moved from paying for the administration of the health care plan from a per capita basis to a lump sum basis

Renewal numbers look good.

Last year we had thirteen large claims that caused a rather large renewal. 15.6%. We agreed to increase the UO’s contribution by $250,000 to increase the maximum cap and ended up with an 18.5% increase to the overall cost of the plan.

This year things are significantly different. There have been fewer large claims for much smaller amounts.

Because the UO has committed an additional $250,000 to increasing the cost of the cap, this is the only benefit change we are looking to make this year and we have asked PacificSource to give us renewals figures only for the cap increase.

PASS OUT SHEETS

*All costs are estimates, as they are dependent on enrollment numbers.

PacificSource gave us three different versions of the renewal with a cap increase. We are, of course, only interested in the cheapest of these three versions - $1M cap with $250K pooling.

• Pooling – bit complicated, think I have it.
• Re-insurance
• For next year’s renewal, PS can only apply $250K toward the Trust’s experience.
• $150K cost more than $250K because our risk is $250K now, to go down to $150K would represent a lowering in our risk – more risk for PacificSource, so more expensive.

This option increases the cost of the plan by $182K, which is below the UO’s agreed contribution level of $250,000.

This renewal is 3.43%, which is significantly less than we saw last year and many other years.

Lump Sum:

• Used to build into the cost of the plan a per capita dollar amount to pay for administration. Due to the difficulty of accurately and continuously adjusting this per-person dollar figure, it was agreed during bargaining last year that it would be better if the UO paid a lump sum for administering the Trust.

• We agreed on the figure of $75K to pay for administration costs, and COBRA.

• It turns out that the $75K might not be adequate for the Trust to meet its obligations. As it stands now, the GTFF, the union, routinely pays the Trust expenses -to avoid unnecessary duplication and to keep costs down - and gets reimbursed through a quarterly billing. It is looking like the $75K is not enough for the Trust to pay what it owes the GTFF and the union ends up subsidizing the Trust. This was, of course, not the intent of our agreement about the lump sum last year.

• We are currently doing work to get an accurate accounting of how much the Trust would need to cover its obligation and expect to have it shortly, but for now we wanted to let you know that we plan to bring a proposal for Section 4.

Although we don’t have precise figures yet, we can say with confidence that the total costs of our proposals will not be more than $250,000 above last years costs for the UO.

Obviously, you miss the delicious back-and-forth, but you get the gist.

Hope to see at the next session.