Hill County employee health insurance premium increase discussed

At their weekly business meeting Thursday, the Hill County Commission tabled discussion of possibly raising county contributions to employee health insurance plans to cover a recent rate increase by their insurance provider.

The Montana Association of Counties, the entity through which county employees get their health insurance plans, recently announced that its rates were going up 6.5 percent and the county’s insurance committee recently recommended that the county absorb this increase so employees wouldn’t need to see their costs go up.

The committee, and some Hill County employees that have been outspoken on the issue, have largely argued that because the wages at Hill County are comparatively low employees will have a hard time covering the increased cost.

They also argued that the county’s benefit package is a selling point of working for the county despite the wages and not covering these increases will hurt retention and recruitment.

At a meeting last week, commissioners Mark Peterson and Diane McLean pushed back on the committee’s recommendation, saying the cost should not be passed on to tax payers during a time of such dramatic inflation.

At Thursday’s meeting almost 30 Hill County employees attended to voice their opinions on the matter universally asking the county to absorb the increase, ranging from $37 to $197 a month depending on the plan and coverage.

Peterson said he is not comfortable making a decision at this week’s meeting and asked the employees present some questions.

He asked the employees present how the county is supposed to pay for things like increased operating costs amid ongoing inflation, and while some offered possible solutions others questioned why that was being asked when the matter at hand is insurance costs.

Jim Litzinger, a Hill County Road Department employee and member of the insurance committee, said he feels the commission should absorb the cost for this coming year while the committee works on shopping around for the next year, and hopes they resolve the issue that way.

Shane Huston, another county employee, said he understands that the commission wants to look out for the taxpayers, but everyone in the room is in the same situation, dealing with inflation just like everyone else.

Eventually the conversation became more focused on the insurance issue and, after some back and forth, Hill County Clerk and Recorder Sue Armstrong said she’s confident that the county’s permissive levy could easily cover most of the rate increase so the county wouldn’t even need to put a tax on the ballot, which Peterson has expressed concern about.

“I feel very comfortable saying that we can cover that,” she said.

Despite this, Peterson said, health insurance is still a tremendous cost to the county. He also seemed to push back on the argument that the increased health care costs would hurt recruitment and retention, saying he recently spoke with an official who told him none of their openings were unfilled because of the county not paying insurance costs under the current plan without an increase.

Peterson also said it’s unfair to compare the wages of different counties because they don’t know what kind of benefits they offer.

Hill County Sheriff Jamie Ross said county employees historically have given up many raises in order for the county to keep paying for insurance premiums, though that was before the current commission’s time.

“We kept our end of the deal,” Ross said.

Bridget Kallenberger, another insurance committee member, said even taking that into account, the county used to pay for more of the insurance and that has been whittled away at over the years, something that effectively amounts to a pay cut.

“It keeps getting cut every year,” she said.

The crowd appeared to agree that the permissive levy could solve this problem fairly easily.

“At that, point I think it’s a no-brainer,” Huston said.

He said, when so many people at the county are struggling to make a livable wage, passing this rate increase off to them is wrong.

Peterson asked what the term livable wage means.

Peterson said the reason rates are going up from MACo is because there was a period of time during the pandemic when people were not having elective procedures done, and now that people are doing them again the rates are going up, which is why there was no increase in the past few years.

“If we can keep our costs down, our insurance rates will stay fairly stable,” he said.

Employees including Hill County Public Health Director Kim Berg said employees shouldn’t be blamed for having these procedures done.

Peterson said blaming people wasn’t what he was doing.

Berg also suggested that implementing a robust wellness program at the county may help.

Health department employee Cortney Detrick said she can’t speak for the her department, but she doesn’t feel like public health has any support from the current commission, a feeling fellow health department employees seconded.

She said she is still paying off a surgery she had for carpal tunnel syndrome, a result of her job and the extreme amount of work that needed to be done during the pandemic, which was unbelievably stressful.

Huston said that two years ago the commission tried to increase what a lot of employees were paying for insurance, and that was long before any rate increases happened.

Two years ago the commission, then made up of McLean, Peterson and Mike Wendland, proposed a budgetary line-item decision that would have shifted the amounts paid for health insurance by county employees who also insured a spouse, children or family to the employee.

That proposal would have had employees paying an increased amount for their insurance and the county paying less in an effort the commission said was intended to reduce the taxes of the larger community.

A document provided by the Hill County Clerk and Recorder’s Office at the time showed a taxpayer who owns a home with a market value of $200,000 would see savings of $7.09 per year, which many argued could not justify the degree to which employee shares were raised.

The shift would have increased the cost to some employees by several hundred dollars a month.

After heavy opposition to the proposal, expressed by county employees and by other county taxpayers, the commission voted it down.

Huston said Thursday it’s hard to stand there and go through this same fight again.

“That tells me that no one really cares about me,” he said. “We care about the seven dollars, or whatever it was, that the 14,000 other people (in Hill County) were going to save... seven bucks, I can’t go to McDonald’s for seven bucks, and that’s once a year.”

Impacts to the employees

The county insurance committee provided a spreadsheet using data from MACo showing costs and impacts of the insurance premium increase under various payment scenarios.

Under the current plan, employees — the spreadsheet lists 93 people covered under various plans — receive $1,325 to use for insurance costs. The employee can choose their level of coverage and if they want to include a spouse, include children or include their entire family.

Because the MACo health insurance pool of people covered is not just Hill County employees covered but all of the county employees in the state covered by the MACo insurance, Hill County adjusting the amount it provides changes the premium increase.

The spreadsheet lists what impact the increase would have on employees if the county does not cover the increase or partially or fully covers it.

If the county does not increase its share of premium payment, in the top-level plan, now fully covered by the county, the increase in employee premiums for an employee-only plan are $48.

In the bottom-level plan, the employee would have a surplus of $221, the spreadsheet shows, even with a $38 increase in premium costs.

The amounts of premium increase with more people added to their plan, so an employee in the top-level plan who insures their spouse would have to pay in $528 a month, an increase of $197, while they would pay $166 for the bottom-level plan, an increase of $159.

If the employee insures their entire family, the top-level plan would cost $638 a month out of their pocket, an increase of $174 a month, while the bottom-level plan would cost them $254, an increase of $140 a month.

If the county increased its payment to include the 6.5 percent increase, to $1,411 a month, an employee-only plan in the top-level coverage would have no out-of-pocket expenses and a person in the bottom-level plan would have a $276 surplus.

A person covering themselves and a spouse would have to pay $353 out-of-pocket in the top-level plan, the spreadsheet shows, while a person in the bottom-level plan would pay $8.

A person covering their entire family would pay $494 out-of-pocket for the top-level plan and $122 for the bottom-level plan.

Strissel and McLean respond

After some argument about the subject, with Peterson doing the vast majority of the talking from the commission, Litzinger specifically asked the other two commissioners their opinions on the subject.

Strissel said, after hearing from employees in recent days and talking with Armstrong and Hill County Treasurer Sandy Brown, he feels that absorbing the 6.5 percent increase is sensible.

“I think it’s doing right by our employees,” he said, “... It makes sense to me.”

Members of the crowd thanked him for his support.

When McLean was asked how she feels, she did not express a position on the issue, but instead criticized the employees’ handling of the situation.

“This feels like an attack,” she said.

When Litzinger attempted to clarify that he was asking how she felt about the issue, she interrupted by saying “That’s how I feel right now.”

Huston said the feeling goes both ways, a sentiment McLean met with seeming disbelief.

“Really? Attacked?” she asked.

“It’s coming out of my pocket,” Huston said. “This happened two years ago even when there was no increase. So do I feel attacked, yes, it’s my livelihood, Diane.”

Peterson said anyone who has opinions on the issue shouldn’t be afraid to come to the commission, but one employee asked how they are supposed to do that if one third of the commission takes criticism as a personal attack.

McLean responded to the question by counting the number of employees who showed up, 25 at the time.

Armstrong said that none of this was an attack.

“Diane, they’re here to give their opinion, their feelings,” she said. “They are not attacking you.”

McLean appeared to become increasingly upset with the group as the meeting went on.

“This is probably the first of many, many, many really, really hard decisions that comes to this desk, and I would appreciate if you had a little bit of concern and thought for the people who have to make those decisions,” she said. “... What do you say to the senior citizen who’s on a fixed income, who’s gas prices have gone up, who’s grocery prices have gone up and they look at you and they say ‘Now you’re going to increase my taxes?’”

McLean said the accusation that the commission is against the employees cuts deep.

“We are not against you, we are not against our own employees, how stupid would that be?” she said.

Communication issues

Beyond the issue itself, the employees also said that the communication on this matter, as well as many others, has been severely lacking, saying they were informed about this issue only recently and the county should have made them all aware that the matter was being discussed.

Peterson said it’s impossible to keep each and every employee up to date on every issue, but Armstrong said it wouldn’t be especially difficult to just set up a Hill County employee email list and send out memos to those who don’t have email accounts.

Kallenberger said the lack of communication isn’t just about this matter, but about other things, including safety concerns.

Employees have no idea what’s going on unless they run into someone who already knows, she said. Like when someone was loose in the courthouse and the health department is still serving people practically next door.

A feeling of wider dysfunction and stress was also expressed by Litzinger and Huston, the latter of whom said it always seems like something like this is happening and they need to spend time fighting over an issue they were told about far too late when they could be doing their jobs.

Peterson said that is just the nature of things at the county.

McLean said that the commission makes decisions in public meetings with noticed agenda.

Confusion over the committee

Committee members also reported dissatisfaction with the general state of confusion in which they were formed and operated in.

Berg said she got an email a while ago saying there was a meeting about insurance and if she wanted input to come, which she did, only to find much more than she expected.

“So I came to the meeting and all of a sudden I’m on an insurance committee and I didn’t know,” she said.

She said Kallenberger sent emails asking what the expectations were of the committee, to no response.

Litzinger has said he didn’t even know he was on the committee until a few weeks ago.

Committee members have also questioned why they were informed about the MACo rate increase so late in the game, effectively once it was too late to shop around.

Peterson said the county was only informed at the beginning of this month, but Litzeinger said a document he saw from them was dated February 7. McLean said that is probably correct.

After about an hour and 10 minutes McLean asked for a motion to to table the mater until next week, but not before asking the employees to think more kindly of the commission.

“We are going to talk about this as a commission without all of you in front of us,” she said. “But please try to give us just a little bit more credit.”

Strissel said the decision on the matter must be made at next week’s business meeting because of insurance enrollment deadlines.

After the motion, Peterson said he’s probably going to vote in favor of absorbing the costs.

During the business meeting the commission unanimously approved revised exit interview forms which commissioner Executive Assistant Sheri Williams, who is challenging McLean in the election for Hill County Commission, said were more streamlined and would hopefully be a better way to get information from employees about why they decide to leave.

McLean agreed that these new forms are good for the county.

Peterson said it would help department heads better understand issues at their departments and make changes.