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Abbeville renews workers' comp and health plans; officials warn self-insured costs remain high
Summary
The council approved renewal of LWCC workers' compensation coverage and a health-insurance package through UMR and Ullisco; officials noted premium reductions but said the city’s self-insured out‑of‑pocket costs continue to rise and remain the primary budget pressure.
The Abbeville City Council approved renewal of the city’s workers’ compensation coverage and its self-insured employee health plan for the coming year.
Officials said the city received a dividend from LWCC and that the LWCC program has returned approximately $1.3 million in dividends to the city since 2018; at the meeting staff referenced a current dividend payment of roughly $218,000 that offsets the renewal premium.
Colton (insurance staff) noted that the city has experienced claim activity and that city departments have worked with LWCC risk management to control losses.
On health insurance, the council approved a plan administered through UMR and Ullisco that the broker said produced about a 2 percent premium reduction compared with last year’s quote. Lloyd Campisi, the city’s broker, said that negotiating a change in stop-loss coverage and finding Ullisco reduced expected stop-loss increases.
Campisi: “Our stop-loss insurer was going to go up $36,000 this year. It is the hard work of finding Ullisco with a 2% plus discount,” he told the council.
But the mayor and staff cautioned that while premiums fell modestly, the city’s out-of-pocket spending on claims under its self-insured retention remains substantial. The mayor provided year-by-year outlay figures for the city’s self‑insured payouts: roughly $2.3 million (2020), $3.1 million (2021), $2.0 million (2022), $2.7 million (2023) and about $2.95 million (2024) — figures staff said include drug and medical costs for which the city is responsible up to its $75,000 per-person stop-loss threshold.
Council approved both the LWCC renewal and the health plan renewals by voice vote.
Staff said they will continue risk-management and employee-safety programs and pursue cost-containment, including pharmacy-management rebates that could offset some drug costs later in the year.
