Health care costs adding $3M to Montgomery County 2023 budget
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Montgomery County will up its contribution to its self-funded insurance program in 2023 to help offset rising medical costs including the impact of employee’s dependents.
According to Budget Officer Amanda Carter, since she has been at the county, that amount has increased each year about 5 percent to keep up with the rising medical and prescription costs. However, the cause of the increase is mostly due to employee dependents.
For the current year, according to Carter, the county is contributing $14,616 per employee. That amount will increase to $15,833 in 2023. Carter said presenting the item to the court is part of the process to develop a preliminary budget for the county.
Overall, with the increase in the county’s contribution for employees, along with contributions for retirees and property and casualty insurance would be just over a $3 million increase to the total budget.
“Our employees are not really causing our health care cost to rise, it is mostly the dependents,” she said. “A lot of the major expenses that hit our medical plan are related to dependents.”
In 2021, the revenues in the self-insurance program were $48.7 million with expenses at $42.5 million. For year to date in 2022, the revenues are at $26.97 million with expenses at $26.51.
Carter noted the county did pay out about $2 million under its contract with Next Level Urgent Care. The county approved the contract last year that allows employees to enroll in Next Level Prime.
According to Next Level’s website, Prime allows employers to subscribe to a direct offering through which employees/health care plan dependents have access to a 24/7 connection with a navigator and telemedicine coupled with the ability to utilize all 17 Next Level Urgent Care facilities for acute care, chronic medical conditions and annual physicals at a $0 patient payment per visit.
Carter said she hopes to continue to grow the Next Level Care program.
“We are seeing a lot of people use that as their primary care physician,” she said.
While the court approved Carter to build the county’s budget around those factors, the commissioners could adjust those numbers during budget workshops in July.
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