For Immediate Release: Tuesday, April 26, 2011
ROCKVILLE, Md., April 26, 2011—The Montgomery County Council today approved a resolution that will create the Task Force on Employee Wellness and Consolidation of Agency Group Insurance Programs. The chief sponsor of the initiative to examine if the County’s wellness programs can be more effective, and whether a consolidation of the insurance programs offered to employees of the five agencies that compose County government operations can lead to potential savings for employees and the County, is Councilmember George Leventhal.
The five agencies that compose County government operations are the County Government, Montgomery County Public Schools, Montgomery College, the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission and the Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission.
Counclmember Leventhal’s statement on the creation of the task force and its mission:
I am sincerely grateful for the co-sponsorship of Councilmember Elrich, Council President Ervin and Councilmembers Navarro and Berliner.
The Executive’s budget proposes to reduce the cost to the County of providing health insurance to employees – by increasing the cost to the employees.
The Executive’s proposals do not reduce the cost of providing health insurance itself.
They also do not address the question of whether we can have health insurance that is better and more efficacious.
This resolution takes a qualitative rather than a quantitative approach. We should not settle for endlessly inflating health care costs, with our only policy change to force our employees to pay more. We should seek better health care and healthier employees.
Healthier employees will mean lower utilization and reduced health costs. Healthier employees will also mean higher productivity. If our goal as a County is to be among the healthiest jurisdictions in the United States, shouldn’t we strive to have the healthiest employees and the most efficacious health coverage?
We are behind the eight ball on this. Other local governments and the private sector have adopted best practices that reduce utilization and improve health outcomes. We should study their success and apply it here.
In addition, we must reduce overhead. There are many ways to accomplish this. Montgomery County Government is self-insured. We carry all the risk. We should be in the driver’s seat when it comes to negotiating with vendors. We should set the terms. We should drive a harder bargain on behalf of our taxpayers and our valued employees.
And the best way to reduce overhead is to consolidate all employee coverage under a single benefits administrator and a single plan.
This resolution adopts two primary themes from the federal health reform effort, with which we are all familiar: We seek to bend the cost curve and create a single payer plan.
Although our residents may not realize it, Montgomery County Government is really five different governments: county government, our public schools, the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission, Montgomery College, and the Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission – and each entity has its own separate health care plans. We are letting our taxpayers down every time we fail to achieve the greatest possible economies of scale and maximize our purchasing power through joint efforts. This is true for health insurance. It is true for energy and electricity. It is true for procurement. Separate efforts have been mounted in each of these areas to improve collaboration, most notably through the Cross Agency Resource Sharing—or CARS—committee. But this resolution will light a fire under those efforts by focusing like a laser beam on health insurance, where inflation is especially dramatic and threatens our long-term budget sustainability.
I understand that the school system may not rush to embrace the concept of a single plan with a single administrator. But I believe the seriousness of this effort will compel the school system to want to be at the table. If indeed there are savings to be derived from administrative overhead – and I believe there are – why would we want to continue wasting money on paperwork and health insurance executive salaries when we could be investing that money in the classroom?
Although we are five different governments, we are all funded out of the same budget (except for WSSC) and that budget is provided by the same taxpayers. We owe it to those taxpayers to bring spiraling health insurance costs under control – and to do it in a way we can all feel good about. This resolution moves us in that direction.
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Release ID: 11-099
Media Contact: Neil Greenberger 240-777-7939, Delphine Harriston 240-777-7931