A review of county employee’s healthcare coverage is one of the annual duties of the Carroll County Board of Supervisors, and Clark Nelson, a Wellmark Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Iowa account manager, braved Monday’s weather to bring these details to the board. He says that for quite some time, supervisor Neil Bock has been asking if they will be getting any money back on their premiums. He is happy to report that this year they are. He says that the consistent membership, with right around 300 employees, has seen an increase in some service use, but decreases in others and this should be reflected in the balance of their bank account. More of these employees, he says, are taking advantage of a new program.
Nelson says the distributions show that the biggest band of patients are in the 56 to 64 age group and 15 that are over the age of 65. The county is saving 43.2 percent from what is being billed to what is being paid to the network providers. One of the changes he is proposing this year is the addition of a prescription drug card to help reduce the expense of specific tiers of drugs on the different plans.
This final category with a $100 co-pay, Nelson says, will likely make patients take notice and talk with their provider about other drug options that are more cost-effective. He also says they will be developing and implementing and opioid management plan, probably in April that will limit the ability to prescribe these drugs past a certain number of days. Overall, Nelson says that the $750 deductible plan will see an increase of about 1.9 percent but the $1,500 plan went down 1.3 percent and the high deductible plan premiums decreased one percent.
