Employees who receive insurance from the University will see an increase in their premium effective Jan. 1, 2024.
Under the current plan, the University contributes 87% of the cost of insurance while employees only contribute 13%. Under this new plan, employees will now pay 20% and the University will pay 80%.
Courtney Hixon, director of human resources, said the need to address the current insurance plan began in spring 2023, in conversation with Faculty Senate and Staff Congress.
“The 80/20 structure is widely accepted as the employer benchmark for group health insurance plans,” Hixon said. “Potential cost containment strategies were presented to a Faculty and Staff Insurance and Benefits subcommittee in June 2023 and September 2023 for consideration. As a result, contribution model structure options and potential plan design changes were presented to the Faculty and Staff Insurance and Benefits Committee in September 2023.”
Insurance and Benefit committee members for Faculty Senate and Staff Congress were presented two plans to choose from: Option A and Option B.
Option A would transition to the 80%-20% cost-share by putting the greater increase on the employee portion of the insurance premium. There would be no change in benefits.
Option B transitions the cost-share distribution near 80%-20%, with the greatest increase on the non-employee portion of the premium. This can include spouse, children and family.
Insurance and Benefit committee members voted and selected Option A as the new insurance plan model, starting in January.
Hixon said the University will continue to partner with Anthem, Express Scripts and Know Your RX Pharmacy Coalition to offer employees the same benefit coverage for services for 2024.
Segal, an HR consulting and benefits consulting firm, made recommendations based on industry trends to the University and committees.
Trish Lofton, staff congress president, said there were plans to begin meeting in June, but issues with Segal, an HR and Benefits consulting firm, prevented the group from meeting until early September.
“Human Resources had worked to get the data from Segal, and [Segal] wanted to have everything through the end of the fiscal year,” Lofton said. “I know we were not happy with the short time frame given to us by Segal because that’s a huge decision to make. It’s not criticizing Human Resources or anything they’ve done because they worked very hard.”
David Pizzo, chair of the Insurance and Benefits committee, said the new insurance plan will be rolled out over a three-year period.
“For the first year your insurance [may] go up $30 a month, the second year $60 and third year $90,” Pizzo said. “It’s literally just divided math, and that’s assuming medical inflation doesn’t exceed 7%.”
These numbers may be different for some employees, depending on which insurance plan they select.
Pizzo said he is concerned about the impact the changes may have on employees.
“We’re gonna lose some people who literally can’t afford to do it,” Pizzo said. “We’re already losing people because they can’t afford child care…so it’s gonna hurt retention but also recruiting in the first place.
Lofton said it was important to her that staff on campus had a voice in this decision.
“We reached out and made a grassroots effort to get their feelings on the proposals for the new insurance premiums, and so we were given permission to be able to share some of the documents that were given to us about these proposals,” Lofton said. “We did not want to vote on something without getting staff opinions across campus. We are elected by full-time and part-time staff. It is our duty to gather their input on important issues such as this, and we wanted to make sure that we gave them an opportunity before the committee voted.”
Employees with questions about these changes and how it may impact them can email [email protected].
