Official wants 'zero increase' in health costs

BY PATRICIA A. MILLER
Staff Writer

Officials here are quietly shopping around for the best deal to provide health insurance to roughly 500 Brick Township municipal employees.

The township uses Insurance Management and Consulting (IMAC), Belleville, as a health insurance broker, instead of negotiating by itself, because brokers can often get better prices, said acting Township Administrator Scott Pezarras.

"It's a very, very closed world," he said of the health insurance industry. "Unless you are a part of that, you don't have an in."

Township Council members decided to take a more proactive role in selecting health insurance carriers this year and called in several other brokers, Councilman Stephen C. Acropolis said.

"We started working on this in August," he said. "In the past, we received information from the administration in the middle of October to late October. We wanted competition. One of the things that brings prices down is competition. In the past, I don't think we had competition."

Acropolis said he told IMAC representatives he wanted a "zero increase" in health-care costs in 2007.

"I was pretty aggressive with our broker early on," he said. "I said 'I want zero.' "

The township currently pays $495,000 a month, or roughly $6 million per year to cover full-time municipal employees and Township Council members who opt for health-care coverage, Pezarras said.

The township's current health insurance carrier is Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey. Employees have a choice of traditional, point-of-service plans, or direct access, preferred provider plans, he said.

Employees currently contribute nothing toward the cost of health insurance, except for co-pays for prescription costs, which range from $5 for generic drugs to $10 for brand-name drugs, Pezarras said.

The other brokers who are vying for township business and trying to obtain quotes from health-care companies are Acorn Financial Services, Commerce Insurance and Innovative Risk Solutions Inc., Pezarras said.

"We have brokers that are supposed to be getting quotes back to us, but they are not getting any quotes," he said. "Until we get quotes from carriers, there is nothing to analyze."

The township is allowed to switch health-care companies, but union contracts mandate that the new coverage must be equal or better than the current coverage, Pezarras said.

"If we get a quote that is less, we take that number to the unions," he said.

Employee contributions to health-care costs is "up to the administration," Acropolis said. "That has to be done through negotiation and collective bargaining. We are not involved in negotiations."

Acropolis is hoping the township will have settled on a health-care insurance carrier for 2007 by the end of the month.

"Since we have to approve the contract, we want a little more input," he said. "The mayor [Mayor Joseph C. Scarpelli] has been pretty good about letting us do some of those things."

Brick is currently in an open enrollment period with Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey, Pezarras said.

"If we have to have another enrollment period, then we will have to have another enrollment period," he said.