Commission requests workshop to review county self-insurance and fully insured alternatives

Flagler County commissioners on Sept. 3 asked staff to schedule a detailed workshop to review the county’s self-insured health insurance program and to obtain a market comparison with fully insured premium options. The request followed a staff report seeking a budget transfer to cover current-year claims under the county’s self-insured arrangement and questions from commissioners about long-term sustainability.

Why it matters: Employee health benefits are the county’s single largest operating expense; commissioners said they want a clearer understanding of the financial trade-offs between self-funding and moving to a fully insured model.

John Brown of Financial Services told the board the budget transfer request covered claims and that he wanted a deeper review of the county’s self-insurance posture and alternatives. “Self insurance to me is meant for much larger corporations... I would like to better understand why we are self insured,” Brown said.

Commissioners asked staff to present a formal workshop with a market comparison. Sherry Beignet of The Bailey Group, the county’s benefits consultant, told the board that obtaining fully insured quotes from the county’s current carrier and the market would likely take six to eight weeks: “It’s probably a 6 to 8 week…process for me to get the fully insured quotes from your current carrier. And then if we wanted to go out to market, of course, we could do that.”

The board reached consensus to schedule the workshop and to ask staff and the benefits consultant to prepare a side-by-side comparison of self-funded costs, reserve use and fully insured premium options, timed to allow fiscal planning for the next budget cycle.

Ending

Staff will set a time-certain workshop and ask the benefits consultant to provide fully insured quotes and market comparisons; commissioners requested the exercise be timed so results can inform the next plan year.