Prep Roundup – Basketball Week 2
November 30, 2016
Patrick Dufrene
December 1, 2016
Lafourche Parish employees can finally rest easy knowing their health insurance will remain the same.
The Lafourche Parish council voted to renew the parish’s health plan with Blue Cross and Blue Shield at last week’s council meeting. The parish will now have open enrollment for employees in December before the renewed plan takes effect in January.
The renewal comes following a month of intense debate regarding the parish’s health insurance. Parish President Jimmy Cantrelle wanted Lafourche to change to a self-funded plan, which presented the possibility of larger savings for the parish at the end of the year. The council pushed for a renewal with the parish’s current, fully-funded at the behest of parish employees who liked the certainty of their current plan.
Cantrelle presented a self-funded plan with Great Midwest Insurance Company twice in October, with the parish council voting it down both times. Cantrelle presented the plan a third time last Tuesday, and the council voted it down once more, citing the uncertainty of the self-funded plan and employee sentiment. After the council also voted down another plan from Humana, Cantrelle finally agreed to let the council vote on renewing the BCBS plan, which it approved 6-2, with councilmen James Bourgeois and Daniel Lorraine voting “no” and councilman Bo Melvin absent.
The renewal was met with applause by employees attending the meeting, providing sonic evidence to the parish workforce’s strong support for the Blue Cross plan. Lafourche Parish conducted a survey of parish employees regarding the different health plans, with about 12 percent of all employees responding. According to Lafourche Deputy Communications Director Caroline Eschette, about 92 percent of survey respondents wanted to stay with the current plan. At the Nov. 22 meeting, Public Works Director James Barnes said in his department 95 percent of workers voted to stay with BCBS, with none choosing the third option offered by Humana.
The renewal news would seem to be music to the ears of Mark Goldman, chief investigator for the Lafourche Parish Coroner’s Office. Goldman spoke to the council before a health insurance vote at the Oct. 25 meeting, detailing his support for the current plan. Goldman was diagnosed with kidney disease in the summer of 2015 and has been receiving dialysis treatments three times a week in his home. He was due for a transplant from his wife, who happens to be a perfect match, on Nov. 29. Goldman sung the praises of BCBS’s handling of his treatment since he fell ill.
“Blue Cross has been billed $330,000 just in the last three months of my treatment. Blue Cross paid only $50,000 towards that $330,000. They got a $280,000 membership discount. In reality what it cost in my pocket was $520,” Goldman said. “That’s not bad. If it works, why fix it? I’m really happy with Blue Cross.”
However, concessions had to be made by both employees and Cantrelle to accommodate the renewal. The BCBS policy initially had a higher projected cost to the parish than the Great Midwest plan. Cantrelle, knowing the parish faces a tight budget with diminished sales tax revenues, kept pushing for the plan which offered the most savings. To make up for the discrepancy in savings, parish employees agreed to take on a larger share of the costs, increasing their own premiums for the sake of keeping the BCBS plan. The five percent contribution level increase by employees would save the parish another $242,000 and make the BCBS less costly than the Great Midwest plan.
Cantrelle said he thought the self-funded plan was the best, as it would have saved employees and taxpayers money on premiums while still offering the same coverage. He chalked up the workforce’s resolute desire to keep their benefits to their fear of change.
“I’ve never had an occasion that I’ve ever worked where employees choose what they want. And then, I’ve never had an occasion when you have savings, to save out their pocket, that they turn it down. I just don’t understand that,” Cantrelle said.
On his end, Cantrelle came down from one of his requests for renewing the current plan. He had asked BCBS to include a spousal exemption, which would force spouses of parish employees to sign up for their own insurance if they have a job that provides health coverage, saving the parish money by removing those spouses from the parish’s coverage. Buddy Ledet, an insurance agent with Gallagher Benefits who has presented the BCBS plan, implored Cantrelle to remove the exemption requirement, noting it would make comparison to the other plans under consideration difficult.
“I don’t want to be the bad guy here when we go around for enrollment, if y’all vote to keep Blue Cross, and they go, ‘Y’all took away our spouses.’ Because I don’t think it’s the right thing to do. It’s not apples to apples here,” Ledet said.
After deliberation, Cantrelle agreed to remove the spousal exemption. Parish Administrator Reggie Bagala wrote an amendment removing the exemption, and the council approved it. Parish Council Chairman Jerry LaFont said the exemption would be a “slap in the employees’ face.” He said many parish employees are underpaid, noting they have received raises not commensurate with the private sector. LaFont said to make up for that, the parish has continually paid more to provide high quality benefits to employees, something Goldman also alluded to.
“Go try to find a guy to operate machinery, a bulldozer, for $15 an hour. Not going to happen. You’ve got guys that have worked with the parish 30, 40 years. You lose them, you lose the experience,” LaFont said. “It’s going to end up costing the taxpayers more money, because you’re going to have to start paying people more to get that position to get that experience.”
Lafourche Parish Administrator Reggie Bagala and Council Clerk Carleen Babin (center) work on an amendment to remove a spousal exemption from the parish’s 2017 health insurance plan. Lafourche employees agreed to raise premiums on themselves so the parish would renew its plan with Blue Cross and Blue Shield.
