Silver Lake to shop health insurance in face of 16.6 percent increase

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Photo by jdurham via morgueFile.com

Silver Lake officials will be shopping around for health insurance in an effort to avoid the 16.6 percent increase presented by the village’s current carrier.

The insurance covers village employees. The Village Board heard about the hike from agent Craig Vaughn of David Insurance at Wednesday’s Village Board meeting.

The village’s current carrier is Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield.

Vaughn had quotes from other carriers that showed the potential for dramatically lower premiums. But he said they were “pre-underwritten rates” that are quoted without specific knowledge of the medical situation of the village’s employees.

“I call them kind of a teaser rate,” Vaughn said.

To get a truly comparable quote, the village will need to have employees fill out a questionnaire about their health and submit that to the companies. The board agreed to have village employees complete that process by the middle of next week. Then the competing companies can submit quotes that would be more comparable with the Anthem quote.

Other quotes might also be able to be used as leverage to get Anthem to reduce their quote, Vaughn said.

The village would need to complete the process in time to switch polices by Jan. 1.

Premium increases in the range of 14 to 19 percent are not uncommon this year, Vaughn told the board.

Any new policy would have to be substantially the same in its provisions as the current one in order to avoid challenges by employees’ labor unions, said Linda Gray, village attorney.

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