Private service providers seek inclusion in GIC
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Human services organizations that have contracts with the state are pushing for legislation that would allow them to join the state's Group Insurance Commission in order to save on healthcare costs.
Decrying the rising costs of health insurance, human service providers with state contracts continued their push Tuesday to be allowed to join the state-employee health pool as a way to control costs.
"Health care costs are killing us. Rates have continually increased and we expect that trend to continue," Aimee Coolidge, director of community and government relations at Pine Street Inn, said.
The Boston-based service provider contributes about $2.8 million to its own employee health plan each year and projects that cost to increase by 10 percent each year for the next five years.
"This increase of $1.7 million is unlikely to be offset by increases in our state service contract and as a result we will have fewer dollars available to provide the services that we provide," she said.
Coolidge testified Tuesday afternoon before the Joint Committee on Financial Services in support of a bill (H 891) that would make employees of private human service providers that have contracts with the state eligible to join the Group Insurance Commission.
"We believe that if they were able to join the Group Insurance Commission, or GIC, that this would increase their access to insurance products," Providers' Council President and CEO Michael Weekes said. "It will address rising health care costs and also minimize the year-to-year health insurance rate increases."
Marilyn Lopez-Haddad, vice president of human resources for the Seven Hills Foundation, told the committee that Seven Hills has seen its annual health care costs double to $14 million since 2009 and has had to change carriers frequently. Some years, she said, there has been no competition for Seven Hills's business.
"We do have limited options," Lopez-Haddad said. Joining the GIC "would give us an opportunity to have some additional choices, which we currently lack."
Weekes said the bill, filed by Newton Rep. Kay Khan, is very similar to bills filed, but not enacted, in previous sessions dating back to at least 2011. He said it would be "reasonable" to expect between 10,000 and 20,000 employees to take advantage of the GIC option in the first year it becomes available.
"Maddening, human service providers' insurance premiums increase +10%/year, and service $ paid by state eaten up by health ins. companies!," committee co-chair Sen. James Eldridge tweeted during the hearing. "So basically hundreds of millions of taxpayer $, in an inefficient, broken healthcare system, are going right to health insurance companies."
No one testified against the bill before the committee closed the hearing on that piece of legislation.
One of the next steps, Weekes said, is to perform an insurance underwriting analysis to get a sense of how the addition of the human services employees would affect the GIC's rates.
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