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Humboldt County reviews IGHCP renewal and reserve, staff to return 3% and 4% scenarios
Summary
Insurance consultant Denise Ballard briefed the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors on the IGHCP trust performance and presented renewal options; the board asked Ballard to return with 3% and 4% renewal scenarios and did not take immediate action.
Denise Ballard, an insurance representative for the Iowa Governmental Health Care Policy (IGHCP), told the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors that the county’s health plan is in improved financial shape but recommended a modest funding increase to rebuild reserves.
Ballard said IGHCP’s year-over-year average renewal for the trust is about 3.09 percent and that Humboldt County’s partial self-fund reserve rose to roughly $40,290 after changes made at the last renewal. She recommended a 2.5 percent total-cost renewal for Humboldt County as a reasonable balance between building reserve and minimizing budget pressure; a 2.5 percent renewal would add about $36,000 to the county’s plan for the next year, she said. Ballard ran alternative scenarios as well and agreed to provide the board with 3 percent and 4 percent options for further consideration.
The briefing covered trustwide and county-specific claims data, plan design and member benefits. Ballard said the trust’s overall trend for 2024 is about 7.2 percent and that Humboldt County’s 20-year average annual increase for total cost has been about 4.1 percent since joining IGHCP in February 2005. She noted that Wellmark, the carrier, delivered a 0 percent baseline renewal in the most recent cycle and that IGHCP’s administrative discount generally keeps group costs below identical fully insured quotes.
On plan specifics, Ballard presented the county’s current design: a $750 single deductible that translates, after IGHCP partial self-funding, to a $5,000 single-level deductible at the carrier layer and a $7,350 carrier out-of-pocket maximum. She said that the county’s funding approach limits county exposure on a single contract to about $5,850 and to about $11,700 on a family contract, and then walked through how those figures scale across the county’s 70 average covered employees and dependents.
Ballard also reported ancillary changes and recommendations: a 6 percent increase in dental premiums (raising single dental from about $30.86 to $32.72 monthly), no change to the vision product, and no required change to the county’s existing basic life insurance premium. She proposed offering higher life-insurance options for board consideration (20,000 and 30,000 dollar levels) and introduced a new voluntary digital health benefit, All Health Choice, scheduled to become available July 1; Ballard described the app-based health checks as a free optional service for members.
Board members discussed the tradeoff between increasing partial self-funding to build cushion versus the county’s near-term budget constraints. Ballard said the county is currently “in good shape” with reserves recovering and that moderate funding (for example 2.5 percent) would increase the reserve without forcing immediate plan design cuts.
The board did not adopt a renewal at the meeting. Instead, Ballard agreed to provide written scenarios at 3 percent and 4 percent (in addition to the 2.5 and 5 percent runs she already prepared) so the supervisors — including members who were absent — could review budgetary effects before taking formal action.
Next steps: Ballard will send the 3 percent and 4 percent renewal scenarios and the board will consider the numbers at a later meeting.
Ending: Ballard said she will follow up with the requested scenarios and the county’s audit/finance staff will reconvene the supervisors for a decision once the additional comparisons are available.
