Travis County Commissioners Court
June 14, 2005
Item 11
Number 11. We may need the air conditioner turned a little bit cooler for the precinct 3 Commissioner. [laughter] 11. Consider and take appropriate action on recommendations from employee benefits committee on fy 2006 county employee, dependent and retiree health care benefits.
>> we have simple item finally, an easy one.
>> yeah, right.
>> judge, every year we come before the court with recommendations from our health care committee and health care committee is made up of -- several individuals from various departments, it also includes a -- representatives from p.b.o. And from the auditor's department along with [indiscernible] transportation natural resources, asme representatives, records management and district attorney and others that -- that give of their time to serve on this committee. And every year we meet and talk about the increases and unfortunately that's what we've seen is increases in our health, the cost of our health care. Fortunately, this year what we have seen is a much lower rate of increase. Our average increase for health care has been about 6% this year. And the -- but the cost of inflation, meaning that the cost of actual services in the medical area has gone up at about the rate of 6 -- go ahead.
>> I’m steve [indiscernible] the actuary, we look at medical care costs increasing still about 10 to 11% a year. Prescription drug costs much higher. Between 17 and 20% per year. So I wanted to make that distinction, in the past we have seen increases up to 25% in our medical health care costs and this year we are happy to report that it's about 6%. You will provide -- you were provided with backup and I would like to go ahead and go over a couple of -- thank you -- a couple of -- of issues. First, the committee decided and is making the recommendation to the court to keep the plan as is. Meaning that we would provide three plans. The epo, which is full coverage, for employees and of course is the most expensive. Ppo would be your base plan, that is the preferred provider organization. And that's a 90/10 plan and then co-insured epo, more of an 80/20 plan. All of those the co-insured epo was developed last year as a means of providing affordability to employees and their families. And then we will have an rx only plan for retirees over 65. If you turn to tab 1, in your backup, you will see the plan and the recommendation from the committee is that that stay the same given the three options that the co-pay for the office visits stay the same, the -- the co-pay for pharmacy and also for mail order pharmacy stay the same. The out of pocket maximum would be $1,500 per individual and 3,000 for a family and that's for the co-insured and the ppo. And of course the epo is 100% coverage. That is truly insurance for the individual and for the family, again a maximum of $3,000 and then the co-pays for pharmacy and the office stay the same. So that he is the first recommendation to the court from the committee. We would like to also mention at this time that the epo, when -- we have been talking about this for a couple of years, but I think in the next year the committee will look hard at the epo and by next couple of years you will see that probably no longer existing as an insurance plan, it just has become very, very expensive. For us. So we hope that by next year or 08 we bring to you a recommendation on that. We would like to -- i'll go ahead and turn it over to dan mansour to discuss the rate plans. You have before you options 7 and 8. The rope that you have 7 and -- the reason that you have 7 and 8 as opposed to the other six before that is that it took six iterations before we could achieve some consensus on the committee on 7 and 8. The premiums and the subsidies will be different in both those plans for each of the different programs, epo, ppo, co-insured epo. We will also cover the premiums for retirees under the aim of 65 and retirees over the age of 65. And that distinction is made because of medicare and over the age of 65 they are required to take medicare and that is approximately $78 a month per employee. So you will see a distinction in premiums for under and over 65. So i'll go ahead and turn it over to dan.
>> good after finally this afternoon, judge, Commissioners. When you look through your backup, two options, option 7 and 8 as alicia said. Three sheets, one for the active employee, one for the retiree under 65, one for over 65. The start to the -- with the actives, as alicia said, premiums and costs going up, projected costs, 6%. The breakout of that is that the active employees will receive a 4.8% increase across all tiers and that adjusts to their figures if you look on -- on option 7 the first page active it will show you in red the increased costs. Now we want to emphasize that the epo is going up stashly. Up in all three areas, all three classes, retirees, actives. Base it is a 100% plan. We have a very rich plan paid at 100%. If you go into the hospital and incur a $20,000 bill, you are going to pay $100 for the admission fee, everything else is paid by the plan. It's important that those costs be adjusted as much as possible to cover that -- that premiums be adjusted to cover that kind of cost. If you look at the increase for the ppo, it's relatively small. I think the employee and adult employee family is 7 to $3 increase, the cost sharing again is done at the point of service not in the premium structure. Full turn actually two pages over to go to the retiree over age 65, I want to draw a comparison to this before we go to the under 65s. If you look at that sheet, that indicates that there's a reduction, approximately an 18% reduction in over 65 premium. Two reasons for that. One is that they have a lower cost in the way of claims and the second is they also pay premium for their medicaid coverage part b. In order to do that, they do have to pay I believe it's a $78 premium, going up here in the next few months. So each month they have an outlay of $78. One of the things that we did last year was to I believe July first of last year, say that our plan would pay secondary medicaid. Whether you get medicare or not, our plan would pay secondary to medicare. Most retirees over age 65 have enrolled in plan b, option a actually comes with the retirement at age 65. You are automatically enrolled. You do pay for part b. That's one of the reasons the 18% reduction was justified. Another reason is that over 65 category was subsidizing the under 65 to a great degree. We felt that as the committee felt that that wasn't a fair step to take. Or to have. So we came back and said let's adjust back to where the costs really are. The highest claimed cost fall in the age category of 45 to 65 and over. But that's the category that we watch for. Where you incur the most expense, the medical expense. That's where our under age 65 population really has hit the plan hard. If you look again at the under age 65 sheet for option 7. I point out now the retiree premium structure for options 7 and 8 are the same. There's no difference. The main difference between the two options fall in the subsidy paid for employee, acting employee dependents coverage. So if you look at the increase, the epo has gone up dramatically, again it's gone up because that's the 100% plan. So if you are incurring a great deal of medical expense that's being paid at 100%, that speaks for itself as to why those costs must go up. If you look at the ppo, there's some adjustments there, but certainly not as dramatic at the epo rates. The committee felt that that was more of an objective approach to how this should be costed out. Another reason is we have gasb 45 coming up, which says that you will identify the actual costs for booking a liability, determining what that liability is of booking that. So there's several reasons that went into the purpose of increasing the rates that you see on this sheet for the under 65 retirees. Nobody was pleased with it. I would say out of the first six options that we looked at, the main argument came down to this class that we felt that something had to be done at this point in time. Because it's -- it's got to be a gradual increase and I think that this is moving us in the right direction. The committee -- sort of speaking for the committee, may be slipping some of my opinions in as well. Are there any questions on option 7 for the rates? What this translates into then is a -- about a 7.1% increase in the county costs or a $1,933,000 contribution increase for the county. If we can go to option 8, the first sheet under option 8 is actives, that has a little more substantial increase for employees on their costs. The epo cost to the employee is $34 as it was on option 7. Which means the employee enrolling in epo will pay a $94 premium if this is approved. But when you look at the cost increases across the epo tiers they are not as dramatic as option 1. That's one of the reasons the subsidy is lower, the employee is picking up the difference. The price tag on option 8 as an increase to county contribution is 5.2% or $1,384,000. That what we are asking the court to give us direction on. But I want to pass this over to steve, if you have anything to add and clarify anything I said?
>> steve ashfiberoptic is our actuary with milliman, we work with him on an annual basis since we've been self-insured to come up with the premiums to look at the costs, to look at the health care trends, also national trends of costs. So steve.
>> I think dan did a good job. Unless there's specific questions that you would have of me, I don't know that I could add other than go into more and more detail.
>> one thing that I would like to add. What we are asking on direction from the court is as you know we've got the employee hearings scheduled for next week and we need to get information out to the employees so they can look at what you are looking at today. And we needed a little direction from you on what you wanted us to disseminate to the employees. Did you want us to send out both plans or would you rather us send out just one of the two plans, that sort of a thing. So we need some direction there as far as what you want us to send out to the employees so that they can see. We have got it ready either way. So it's the pleasure of the court.
>> we do have a calendar that would have the employee hearing next week on June the 22nd. Starting at 4:00. Is that correct? Starting at 4:00, then a voting session for the court June the 23rd and then another one the Tuesday the 28th. I believe. So we would like to get the information to the employees and be able to get their feedback to the court by next week.
>> both options.
>> okay.
>> things that I don't know that I would have a voting session on Thursday on this. Not two days after the public hearing.
>> no.
>> I would have it next Tuesday. I have a question. We discussed this last year and I forget the answer. If the county pays us $34 that otherwise we would pass on to employees using epo, it's before taxes.
>> they have the choice of having their premiums deducted pretax.
>> so the employees can do that. If they say okay I want --
>> [multiple voices]
>> just deduct it, then it's still pretax.
>> yes, sir.
>> okay. That's the second question, do you want your premiums deducted pretax.
>> do we indicate the importance of it?
>> we have a little write up about it. I would say probably 99.9% of the employees have their premiums deducted pretax already. It used to be that the only reason you wouldn't choose that if you knew you were going to make a change preplan here. Now with all of the hipaa status rules, you are allowed to make your changes, it's really become kind of a non-issue. It is important to realize that that is an important pretax deduction that an employee can make.
>> the second question is how do we explain the increase for retirees under 675, they really don't think that they are being victimized.
>> let me answer and steve can address from the actuary standpoint. Their options that -- that retirees under 65 have, the epo is where the hardest hit comes in, there is the ppo, that they can select that has a lesser degree of cost to it. So there's an option. They are not nailed into a -- committed into one plan. The other is that in comparison, you had asked us to do with other public entities, alicia I think has some details on the cities, for instance, the city of corpus christi offers coverage to under 65 retirees, but there's no subsidy. Lcra does so but on a sliding scale of contribution and subsidy. The city of Austin does so as well. But alicia has some figures for the city of Austin.
>> the city of Austin does their retirees, sets a -- the premiums for health care of the retirees under 65 on a sliding scale in accordance with the number of years served at the city with 20 years being the maximum. But for example if we take the city of Austin, the employee plus spouse on ppo, there -- with a maximum of 20 years, their premium would be $489.60 a month for employee plus one adult. In Travis County, under option 7, it is 512. So it is --
>> [indiscernible]
>> no. That is plus spouse. Plus spouse. And it's $512. So we know that we are in the ballpark, city of corpus christi pays no subsidy for their retirees, we have also looked at fort bend county offers coverage to receive full contribution retiree must have 8 years. So they all have different -- different means tests or I guess different requirements for getting coverage and some don't offer coverage at all. City of houston offers coverage and contributes 30% towards premium only. And we talked about the city of Austin, Williamson county, offers coverage with no subsidy, retiree pays full premium. In response to your question, judge, as to how do we explain to retirees under 65 the -- the large increases is by saying that this is more reflective of the true costs really or the expected costs of the health insurance including their claims and administrative costs. In previous years we and the committee were very cognizant of their actions. Because we did not want such a large increase, we artificially kept the increases down to 13 and 14 percent for retirees. This year, because of what we expect in gasb, which will be the requirement of governments to book or account for the liability of health insurance to retirees, we thought it would be much better -- public policy to introduce a truer cost and premiums to retirees under the age of 65. Again you have those that -- that have the highest -- highest cost per capita in claims getting yes the highest increase in premiums. Over 65 medicaid kicks in, we don't pay that much of your -- if you are an inactive employee, you are part of a much larger pool of over 3,000 employees. When you are under 65, we think 120, 121 employees so it becomes a much smaller pool. Also.
>> a reference outs of 121, 65 retirees, in the epo plan, of those 19 have spouses. You can see what the costs are if you have 50% of -- if you are eligible in one plan, it pays 100%, you are really incurring a great deal of cost.
>> that's 161 you said?
>> 121 retirees, 121, under 15 retire from the county. At what rate do you think that we are growing that yearly?
>> I -- that's one of the things gasb was looking at.
>> in charge of that, in -- [multiple voices]
>> I would like to know how soon we are going to be equal to general motors. [laughter]
>> the significance of option 7 and option 8 have to do with the county contribution. Option 8, I believe it is, the second option, brings it in approximately where we had projected previously about $1.3 million. Option 7 cost you 541,000 more in the general fund. If you send both of these options out, a person would be a fool to say anything, you want to pay $40 more a month leroy or do you want to pay $7 more. Well, i'll take seven.
>> > by the way we are getting a raise.
>> that's right.
>> I mean that's the only thing. I know that we took a couple of votes on the committee, I was in the minority and that's fine. But I mean there's just so much money or the tax rate. You know, obviously the 2% was based upon a 1 pony 3 health insurance. 1.3 health insurance.
>> when we unhitched this, it was appropriate. We had a blending of all retirees, we were seeing it was unfair, we were cost shifting a lot of things on to people who were over 65 who quite frankly may have retired at a time when their number was a different kind of a number, they didn't get the kinds of increases as opposed to a lot of people who have retired with us under 65 and gone to work for somebody else, continuing to be in the workplace. It just means that they are to get their insurance from us. That's legal, they can do that. But over 65, they are -- it was not appropriate that they should have to bear the burden of what was going on in a different rate class of people who might be getting certain kinds of injuries, things happening, because they are still active just not active Travis County folks.
>> we pay less for those over 65 because of medicare, also a larger number of retirees, 278 compared to the 121 that are, you know, in between -- not working and under the age of 65. So --
>> as well these rates are intended to begin, I don't mean that they are setting policy, but they are moving more closely to a policy direction. Because for 16 or 19 retirees under age 65 with spouses, at one level when we are dealing with a $33 million account, their increase in contributions is not significant. It's not material. And yet the policy of having retiree contributions under 65 for the retiree and the spouse, this will set a policy that might significantly change the impact of how people think about retiring early or how they might go about accepting this policy -- accepting this retiree medical program. So I think that bigger structural changes really haven't been discussed. But the result is much higher increase for the retirees under age 65. There were significant changes in terms of all we are showing the premiums for the total cost of the program. How we are last year we illustrated a zero contribution on behalf of dependents and in fact those were implicit, subsidies, now we are trying to get closer to explicit subsidies so there's a lot of information in these numbers that I think will -- will set us in motion for much more difficult decisions down the road. But trying to get more accurate information out in the public eye in terms of what is the valve of the benefits under age 56 and the value of the subsidy under age 65 and try to get individual who are contemplate being retirement to understand the value much these benefits as it will roll into our projections for the financial accounting that need to come in in a couple of years.
>> we've had this discussion before. A couple of years ago, maybe three years ago, the hmo, epo is on its way out. I think we said back then there will come a time when this thing will price itself out. There may be opportunities for some of the folks who are under 65 retirees to flip over to the ppo. And it doesn't even that we are going to zero out their increases, but to have to do some of the cost sharing, it's the way to still have a more affordable, I won't say affordable, but a more affordable kind of a plan is to help -- because the increase for the employee only is only eight bucks a month. That is beyond modest in terms of what's going on there. I know a question that comes up all the time we do this. People going well can't we just change insurance companies? And it's like this is reflective of the actual claims that are coming into Travis County? And if we are unhappy with how expensive this stuff is, then we have to look at each other and say, we are the ones generating all of these claims and medication and I’m very blessed that we have a plan that can take care of the medical needs of ourselves and our families and the retirees and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. What we cannot have happen is in our desire, zeal, whatever word you want to use to try to shield people from certain increases, we basically make it unaffordable for everyone else to have any kind of a decent plan because you have to start stripping off services in order to shield people from what -- these are the real costs, that's just what blows my mind. It's reality, folks. Better good healthier, dr. Turner, where are you?
>> [indiscernible] public hearing did was that suggesting also to include the employees, city county impact.
>> as soon as we get out of here today, we have the retiree piece ready to send to the print shop. We will get it in the mail about a day, so they will also be invited to attends the public hearing, we have three retirees on the benefit committee. And they have been very useful. Their input and their point of view and their perspective has been very useful to the committee in looking at these rates.
>> are they over 65 or under 65?
>> actually, they are all -- well, two are over, one is under.
>> okay. Their input has been very valuable. They hate to see the increase, but they understand the need in looking at all of the data. We have been working on this several months, they understand the need.
>> make sure they come to the public hearing.
>> I hope so.
>> the [indiscernible] rate for retirees under 65 for the county's contribution is 1,010 per month. So for every retiree, it's 12,120 that the county is paying to supplement their retirement premiums. I do have your answer, Commissioner Daugherty. We currently have 326 employees that are employed at Travis County that could retire tomorrow. Of those, then through '06 there's had 49 employees that are -- there's 449 employees that are eligible. We have projected 35 of those employees will retire. Those are the numbers that we have, 35 out of 449. Over the next eight years, there's 1401 employees that will be eligible to retire. If you start multiplying that portion of those retirees that are less than 65 and I don't have that answer, it is a substantial financial commitment, especially with gasb 45 where you have on to accrue those benefits. So ...
>> anything else today? Anything we need to hear?
>> yes. We have a lot of other issues that we would like to cover. On this one is a direction to go ahead and accepted out both options -- send out both options to the employees.
>> I would.
>> in the preliminary budget leroy do we have a small paying [indiscernible] for retirees,? The preliminary budget.
>> we have been projecting 2%.
>> retirees.
>> oh, yes. We had projected the same percentage increase for retirees that we projected for rank and file.
>> okay. Number 3 is a co-insured epo plan, that be used as a default option for employees who do not complete all steps in open enrollment. We have done that in the past. It's the co-insured epo. We have ample time for people to -- to make the choices on their health care plan and if they don't, for whatever reason, and don't come in with -- with showing that they have insurance elsewhere, we just use default, that's co-insured epo, we would like the direction from the court on that to maintain it. Employees being formed, we have already talked about that one, that the epo plan may go away and the committee will work on that. Going to do the switch to the choice --
>> sure. Number 5 is the switch to the choice plus plan, we want to do a plan modification that should be seamless to the employees and change the existing options, ppo plan to on call choice plus. It been recommended by united health care for a variety of reasons. One of the reasons is that there will only be one network. So everybody will be using the same network. Even the ppo people will still use the choice network. They did a disruption study and there was one disruption that would show up for an out of state retiree. In this area that means that they have their contracts across the board. Where the ppo providers are also on the epo network. Projected savings, the contract that is in place under this particular plan is more advantageous to us than the contracting that is existing under the options ppo plan. It looks like somewhere between one and a half and two million dollars savings, most of that will come from claims savings. The advantageous contracts are mostly with the hospitals because that's where you get your big dollar savings. Also, then with one network there will be less confusion on are you looking at the right directory to find your doctor or the right spot in the network to find your ppo provider. Also when you go to the hospital right now if you are on the ppo go into the hospital, you need to precertify that stay in the hospital and if that is not done, you could incur a $250 penalty. Changing to the choice plus, will move the responsibility for that notification to the provider and if it does not happen, the provider takes the hit, not the employee. And in most cases it's the provider's office that does on that notification anyway, so they are just putting their responsibility on to the provider. We think that it a good move to make. It come was a new plan document. Which is a lot of work for bash before and for me to -- barbara and me to try to get a new plan document in place. It's their new updated wording. We want to change it all to the new wording so we will be consistent across the board as much as possible.
>> initially, the comment about a lot of work put me off, I started reading that plan document. In truth it will better serve every one of our employees. That new document is a much prettier document from a user friendly perspective for employees. Much less a go here, go there, go someplace else to find out everything that you need to know about whatever service you need to get. It's a much, much preferred --
>> it's written from the point of view of the employees.
>> it will be so much better once we get it fixed so it describes our plan instead of the plan that the form comes with.
>> we used to have a lot of special add on contracts [multiple voices] what happens to that.
>> they are still in place. That will just keep right on going.
>> thank you.
>> Travis County provider network. Alive and well.
>> just wanted to make sure that didn't go away with the switch.
>> we are just wanting the court to approve the change to the options plus and also the change to the plan documents and that will be on page 6, that's your items five and 6. If we could get some direction.
>> how firm are the projected cost savings.
>> how firm? We got those directly from united health care. Like I said the bulk of the savings, 1.3 of the savings, 1.3 million is projected for annual claims. The others we are getting on our admin fees and our stop loss premiums. We know we have at least $300,000 worth of firm savings. The others will depend on if we have services in those places where the more advantageous contracts are at. They know what we have done in the past. They can look and sigh what our history has been this is their projection.
>>
>> [one moment please for change in captioners]
>>
>> …so we took that choice and started our plan under the only option we had. Harris county wanted to get interest a self-funded. Two years ago they went in and amended the chapter that we went under. But there was a lot of -- a lot of -- a lot of the small counties just didn't want their subchapter amended so they created a new subchapter called subchapter s, and under subchapter s, you didn't have to go out for newspaper every time you want to change your plan and you are not required as part of the law to have approval of the auditor of the way you write your plan. These are the three tkeuf ences between the sub chapters. I tried very hard to make it an easy switch, but they insisted on a hard switch. The only way we can move from the subchapter we're in now, the subchapter that would give us the best opportunity and direction in relation to stop loss is terminate what we've got now and start a new plan. And so because risk was looking at wanting to go at a stop loss that was at a higher level than is allowed under a current plan, it's necessary for you to decide whether you are willing to switch from subchapter a. So s. In local government code 157.
>> the recommendation is that you do. That would simplify it. The next recommendation is change individual stop loss amount from 125,000 to 150,000.
>> the current stop loss retention is $125,000 which the county pays anything over that on individual claim is picked up by our stop loss insurance through united. We've had a not very good experience and therefore our premiums are going up quite high. If we make the adjustment from 125,000 to 150,000, we'll have an approximate $500,000 savings in premium. We don't think the incurred liability will rise to that level even if we incur an additional $25,000. So we're recommending to the court that we do move to the $150,000 stop loss level.
>> the other three recommendations have to do with dental and the extension of supplemental dependent and retiree life. As you know, we have life insurance up to $25,000 for each individual employee, and we have -- offer supplemental insurance also for their -- for the employee and their dependents. Dan, you want to cover those quickly and then short and long-term disability.
>> can I do those. 9, 10 and 11 on the purple sheets, we're recommending renewal under safeguard. We're under a rate guarantee so there's no increases. We're just recommending retphaofl with no rate change. Number 10, we want to also renew the supplemental life, dependent life and retiree life. We went out for bid on basic life because that is something that county dollars are spent on and we weren't under a rate guarantee for that. We are now reviewing those responses and will be back shortly within the next couple of weeks with a recommendation on the basically life. So we do recommend that we continue on as we are right now on the life products. And number 11, the disability product, we're also under a rate guarantee for those. There is no rate increase and we recommend continuing on as we're doing that. One thing I would like to mention on the short-term disability is we had a process enhancement go into effect June 1st. Those of you that read your public announcements will now we are now filing our short-term disability claims telephonically. If you become disabled and need to file a short-term disability claim, you will call unum directly, they will take your information on the phone. You will present off the website an authorization form, sign it and fax it to them and they will get the information they need directly from your doctor. That will speed up the whole process considerably. Plus you won't have to wait on your doctor to fill out the forms and possibly pay the fees that they are now charging in the doctors' offices to fill out the forms. We think it's a win-win situation for our employees but just need direction on all of these we want to renew with no rate increase. Purchasing will be coming back with the actual contract modifications.
>> we would like to go ahead and publish the rates for the employees since those do not change.
>> and those rates are shown on tab 2 in your tkpwabg-up.
>> there have been some changes for the good from the federal government in relation to spending under the flexible spending account, giving us more time to spend our allocated dollars as opposed to nobody is around in September because we're all at the dentist and the doctor trying to spend down our dollars. Cindy, at what point -- or alicia, at what point will we address that change which is to the positive?
>> probably the next time we come back to court that will be on the agenda. We are aware of that. Barbara is working on it from now. We're waiting for input as far as what's required in the way of amendments. But basically what it is, it gives you an extra two and a half months to incur and file claims on your plan year. We made it go into effect before the end of our plan year this year, it would apply to this year. So you'll kind of have overlapping plan years there at the end of your plan year, but it's kind of positioning the f.s.a. Vehicle, i'll call it, to move into a rollover position. It's not quite a rollover, but it's certainly giving people a little more flexibility.
>> it allows two and a half additional months to incur your expense and it -- it's a good program. I do want to mention one other program that we'll be bringing back to court with some detail and that's bona fide we willness plan with a -- wellness plan with an associated health savings account. There is a similarity to the flexible spending account, but there's considerable difference. In one the main difference now is that health savings account can roll over year to year. And this will be cost neutral program that we'll be bringing back to the court. I had the opportunity to discuss this with several court members. We'll bring back a detailed business plan to you for you to consider.
>> dan, is there any numbers that may be available for the impact of the Travis County wellness program as it relates to what we're dealing with here today as far as the actuary actually looking at the program and if we didn't have the program in place, would the numbers be greater than what they are being suggested here today?
>> we have a full report for the court scheduled for June 28th that will include the quarterly health report and also then a report on the wellness clinic and the impacted.
>> okay. I wanted to see if relationship.
>> do you think you've had enough time to really -- quantity taeufl prove anything?
>> we've made some dramatic results so we're prepared to bring you some good news.
>> we have some very good testimony too.
>> well, thank you.
>> move approval of recommendations 3 through 11.
>> second.
>> have we got complaints on the dental care plan or are the employees pretty stphaep.
>> it seems like to me that every now and then we will get some input from employees on the dental plan, but for the most part i'd say the majority of our employees are doing well with it. Dental plan doesn't cover everything and when you go in to get dental work and suddenly find out your dental insurance doesn't cover everything that you need to have done, sometimes that's a little bit of a shock to employees. As far as the providers, we get a little bit of input, but not a lot. I wouldn't say it's a major problem.
>> any more discussion?
>> judge, there is one other item, number 1, that the recommendation just to retain the four options and the tiers and the plan as is.
>> sounds friendly to me.
>> that's friendly to the second.
>> discussion? All in favor? That passes by unanimous vote.
>> thank you very much.
>> thank you very much for your hard work, dedication, et cetera. All of it was not good news, but I know you try to as good as you can. Good to see you again, steve.
>> [inaudible].
>> when I call you steve, you know I can't recall your last name, right?
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Last Modified:
Tuesday, June 14, 2005 8:42 PM