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Monroe County officials flag health self‑insurance shortfall; council weighs $3M+ supplemental requests
Summary
County auditors and HR officials told the County Council that rising claims have left the self‑insurance fund deeply short for 2025 and forced proposals to sweep and appropriate millions to cover current bills and to fund 2026 per‑employee allocations.
Monroe County officials told the County Council on Aug. 26 that unexpectedly high medical claims this year have created a large shortfall in the county’s self‑insurance fund and forced requests for supplemental appropriations and accounting changes.
Auditor Bree Gregory told councilors that the county’s total anticipated revenue for 2026 is $127,000,655 while departments requested about $137,000,000, producing a roughly $9.4 million gap. The more urgent problem she and HR Director Ethan Starn described was a spike in health claims for 2025 that has driven near‑term cash needs higher than projected.
“We received invoices from Anthem in August that indicate costs have increased significantly,” Starn said. He told councilors that the county receives insurance invoices twice a month; recent invoices have ranged from about $250,000 on average to $1 million for a recent payment and another invoice next week of over $500,000.
Starn and other staff told the council they expect to ask for several additional appropriations this year: a roughly $3.0 million…
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