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Bee Cave council renews employee health plan with Texas Health Benefits Pool
Summary
The Bee Cave City Council approved renewal of its employee health insurance contract with Texas Health Benefits Pool for fiscal 2025–26, accepting a plan redesign staff said would lower the city's premium costs while shifting some deductibles.
The Bee Cave City Council voted unanimously on June 20, 2025 to renew the city’s employee benefits contract with the Texas Health Benefits Pool for fiscal year 2025–26, approving a revised plan design that staff said would reduce the city’s premium expense.
Human resources director Miss Winburn presented the staff recommendation. She said the pool had proposed a 9% renewal on the city’s current plan, but staff negotiated an alternative plan design that the city’s broker, Jeff Clark of Watkins Insurance, showed would lower the city’s premium cost by about 1.33% compared with renewing the current plan.
Under the alternative, Winburn said the per-person deductible would increase from the city’s current deductible; the transcript records the proposed per-person increase as “$7.50” (see provenance). Staff also said the family deductible would increase from $1,000 to $1,500 and the maximum out-of-pocket would rise from $2,000 to $3,000. Winburn and Clark emphasized that the most-used services — office visit copays, emergency room and urgent-care copays, and pharmacy copays — would not change under the proposed design.
Clark said the pool sets municipality renewals based on aggregated claims experience and the city’s own loss ratio, which he said was about 115% for the plan year (down from roughly 127% the prior year). Clark added that the broker solicited quotes from the market but received declinations because of the city’s claims experience. According to staff figures presented on the record, renewing the current plan at a 9% increase would add roughly $78,000 in cost to the city; the recommended alternative with the plan-design changes would lower the city’s cost by about $11,500 compared with that 9% renewal.
A council member moved to approve the contract renewal and the motion carried unanimously by voice vote.
Council members and audience attendees in the meeting acknowledged that rising medical costs are a national trend but several speakers on the dais and in the audience characterized the revised plan as competitive for municipal benefits. No public comments were recorded opposing the renewal.
