Travis County Commissioners Court
April 14, 2009,
Item 15
Number 15.
15.
consider and take appropriate action to create a special cobra rate for the covered surviving spouse/dependents of an active employee who dies.
>> that is -- that is correct.
judge and Commissioner, alicia perez, executive manager for administrative operations.
this recommendation came from the benefit committee.
as you know, we have started to meet a couple of months ago to look at the overall benefits of -- plan and make recommendations to you in the coming weeks.
one of the things that we can considered, though, when we met last time and just for sharing and your understanding, sometimes particular cases come to the benefit committee as a -- as they occur.
that causes us to look at overall policy and if we think that they are -- that their changes are needed or there are some issues that -- that the court needs to be made aware of, we bring those forward.
this happens to be one of those times when a particular case came to us.
and we thought that the policy needed to be changed and we wanted to share that recommendation to the court.
with you this particular policy evolved out of an issue that came to us where the committee, the benefits committee found out that when a retiree dies, the -- the spouse or dependent takes the retirees place and is able to pay the rate that the retiree rate for the rest of their life.
okay?
and cover dependents at that retiree rate for the rest of their lives.
when someone dies and is employed at the time of death, by Travis County, the family goes on to the cobra rate, which is about 102% of what they would pay if they were just -- if they were just being covered as a spouse or a dependent under the same benefit.
so -- so we looked at that and we don't have too many of these cases.
but there are cases where the person that dies who is an employee of Travis County happens to be the sole provider of the family or the -- or the spouse makes very little money and is not insured, works or is self employed and is not insured.
so there is a great dependency on health insurance.
that is provided by the individual who -- who dies.
and for example if you look on page 3 of your backup, those are the rates and the proposed rates.
and I would ask you to look at the p.p.o.
because that's the one that's most used, that's the second tier in category -- column in your list there.
but a surviving spouse of an individual that dies while employed at Travis County would have to go from paying 222 to 506 a month.
for coverage.
okay?
if they were a surviving spouse and one child, they would pay as opposed to 286, which is a proposed special cobra rate, but also the rate that is currently paid by employees for that -- for the -- for the surviving spouse and one child, they would pay 683.40 a month.
surviving spouse and two or more children is 949, almost a thousand dollars a month.
child rate only is 176.
the committee thought that -- was high at -- at a time of grief and of loss for the family.
so the proposal was to provide just a 24-month special cobra rate for employees.
24 months.
what you see here in the green is the proposed special cobra rate, that would be what the husband would have been paying or the wife would have been paying for the husband or the dependent.
to have that special cobra rate, we thought it would assist the families again for a two year period as a bridge, as just a means of coping both financially and emotionally without having one more loss of health insurance at the time when you are adjusting to your -- to your primary breadwinner or --
>> you may not have the same income.
>> you may not have the same income, either.
that is to adopt a special cobra rate.
the court, a couple of you asked what are our entities doing.
we asked did -- we have that information.
>> cindy perrington, human resources, I connected with what the city of Austin and the state of Texas are doing.
at the city of Austin, it's -- if they are not eligible to retire at the time of death, they do regular cobra, the 36 months of cobra at their regular cobra rate.
which is what our current procedure is.
if they are eligible to retire at the time of death, the spouse may stay on the plan and pay a -- pay a surviving spouse rate, they have an actual surviving rate set up, at the city it's based on how many years of service you gave the city.
surviving spouse rate but also the tenure involved with that.
>> [one moment please for change in captioners]
>> and plan to pay their survivor price rate so both entities have a special spouse survivor rate spet support, vary agoing on the two entities, so the state of Texas, the dividing line is if you have been there ten years or less than ten years, and Travis County right now if someone skies and they are an active employee, the family is eligible for 36 months of cobra at the existing rate of cobra, so we are proposing to get the procedure the same, they still would go on cobra but we want to adjust the rates and have surviving spouse rate like the other two entity
>> are the other two entities self-insured.
>> city of Austin has oneself insured plan, I don't believe the state of Texas does, city of Austin's ppo is self-insured and their hmo is fully insured, so we -- also on our proposal, the people cannot be eligible for any other insurance, so let's say the spouse is working and had insurance available to them at their job, we would expect them to take that insurance rather than coming on ours.
it would be cheap or for them, in any case.
>> and to that, I will refer you again to your packet.
we put a one pager in there that has special cobra rates eligibility criteria and that would be spouse or dependent of employee who die, a spouse or dependant of employees who die while employed at Travis County.
those would be the rebel participants, employee must have completed three or more years of service at Travis County, special rates can only be extended for 24 months.
and applies only if surviving spouse or dependants are not eligible for other health coverage.
>> I guess the state of Texas has a tenure requirement, what if we were to say five years instead of three.
>> tenure is -- are eligible for retirement and
>> [indiscernible]
>> okay.
>> that is their vesting point.
>> they are vested.
>> yes, that is the vesting point at in stage.
>> I guess one is three years is not long at all.
five years a little bit longer but --
>> we can bring this up again, we are having another benefits meeting this Thursday and we can certainly talk about adjusting the amount of time, we weren't really -- the benefit committee wasn't aware what the city and state were doing when we picked three years, so if you would like us to go back and revisit it, we can.
>> in terms of justification, we are trying to provide just an additional benefit for the survivor of the active employee who died.
>> correct.
>> and sort of a show of -- you -- we want to work with you and your survivor.
>> for a safety net for five a couple of months.
q.
well, I think five years is best, because I think three years is a short -- a short time.
the court --
>>
>> [indiscernible]
>> okay.
>>
>> [indiscernible].
>> whether we want or not it or not, ms.
wilson.
>> if you don't want it.
>> we eagerly look forward to your opinion.
>>
>> [laughter]
>> every time.
executive session.
all right, sir.
>> bling it back.
>> were there any other --
>> we can get the advice today, if the court wants to take another week, that is fine.
if they want to deny this kind of judge the opportunity to vote on this, they can do it next week.
we will take 15 into executive session into consultation with the attorney,
The Closed Caption log for this Commissioners Court agenda item is provided by Travis County Internet Services. Since this file is derived from the Closed Captions created during live cablecasts, there are occasional spelling and grammatical errors. This Closed Caption log is not an official record the Commissioners Court Meeting and cannot be relied on for official purposes. For official records please contact the County Clerk at (512) 854-4722.
Last Modified:
Tuesday, April 14, 2009 2:20 PM