MT School Health Insurance Summit
January 30-31, 2024
What are the best possible outcomes of working collaboratively to create a statewide health insurance trust for MT public school employees?
Affordability for School Districts
- Lower premium costs
- Affordable plans regardless of school size
- Affordable healthcare- healthier community
- Lower rates of increases annually
- Rates are affordable, steady and well managed.
- Affordable cost
- Good health care coverage that is affordable to our employees and districts
- More affordable rates & costs to the school & EE’s
- Great rates
- Be able to afford insurance rates for everyone, classified staff included
- Districts will be able to get insurance at reasonable rates- that are being well managed
- Ability to offer more affordable health insurance
- Frees monies for salaries and teacher supports
- Affordable
- School districts will be able to have affordable insurance for all
- Significant savings freeing up resources to be used for students
- Every district would be able to offer “affordable” health insurance to their employees within their current budgets
- Affordable
- Save on costs for districts
Reduced Cost for Members
- More money in school employees’ pockets
- More money in the pockets of employees
- Insurance costs consume less and less of the total compensation
- Salary increases
- Cost of living reduced allowing schools and communities to flourish
- People don’t go into medical debt if catastrophic issues
- Reduce individual cost
- Cost savings for all districts/employees
- Montana teachers have a statewide insurance plan that is affordable with great coverage
- The insurance will cover the entire family with a low copay and rates stay the same now and in the near future
- Premiums are affordable to all districts & employees
- Coverage provided based on salary or hourly wage instead of one flat rate
Health Insurance for Everyone
- All school employees and families are covered to fit different income brackets with lower premiums for both districts and employees
- The health of community members improves
- Insurance options available to all district personnel at reasonable rates
- Affordable Insurance for all school employees
- Affordable health insurance for all employees and families
- School health trust has provided a sustainable and affordable pool that serves the healthcare needs of our staff
- Quality insurance coverage for all staff
- All employees will receive PPO or better health insurance with options to choose their care
- There will be a positive impact and a reduction in healthcare costs for districts and employees
- Affordable health coverage for all district employees across the state
- No district will have to worry about insuring all employees and their families
- Benefits cover needs of all teachers/staff
- All staff has affordable health insurance
- All districts can afford health insurance
- Every school employee in the state has access to affordable insurance
- Insurance for all schools will become affordable and less burden on the taxpayers
- All schools will have employee health insurance
- All school personnel in the state will have affordable insurance coverage
- More people insured/improve access
- Increase number of individuals eligible to participate
- Support all staff members in our state education system
- Excellent coverage for all school
- Capture new members to plans with the new & better benefits
- Potential for retirees to benefit
Recruitment and Retention
- Lower premiums make school employment more attractive in rural areas helping with teacher shortages
- We are able to fill many more of the unfilled positions in our school districts
- Sustainability and recruitment of staff – higher quality educators
- Increase recruitment and retention
- Public education becomes a more viable professional and an increase quality of students going into education
- Health benefits differentiate employment in MT for the better
- Health benefits become an incentive for new hires and recruitment/retention becomes easier
- Schools can increase teacher salaries for recruitment and retention – be more competitive
- Retention of staff and ability to recruit
- Recruitment & retention of all school staff
- Recruitment/retention increase for all staff (benefits package)
- Better staff retention & recruitment
- Recruitment/retention of staff
- Affordable, higher quality insurance allows schools to retain and recruit excellent educators to best serve our students
- Increase recruitment & retention of teachers and support
- Could improve personnel recruitment if plan is solid/sustainable
- Can use as recruitment tool for new and veteran teachers/staff
- Helps recruit teachers/staff
- Allow for more employees to be hired and stay
- This will free up district funds to help recruit and fund more quality educators/staff
- Able to recruit and retain staff
- Recruit and find more bus drivers
- Benefit plan becomes a recruitment bonus
- Increase in recruitment
- Increase in retention
- Retain & recruit employees
- Increase teacher recruitment and retention
- Recruiting teachers easier
- Retain staff
- Attract top talent
- Level the playing field for attracting and retaining employees
- Help to retain staff already have
- Retain quality staff
- Staff retention is possible
- Ease retention due to health insurance being the same statewide
- More job applicants
- Staff retention
- Attract more qualified candidates
- A benefit plan is developed that makes it attractive to work in education in MT
- Less turnover in employment
- Influx of new teachers – new staff
- Young adults again view a career in education as fulfilling life path
- Retaining employees, get employees from neighboring states
- Get more people to consider teaching profession
- Better pay & benefits so more students study to be educators
Valuing Educators/Increase in Quality of Education
- An education system that values its employees by providing security and stability
- A positive environment in order to facilitate learning and growth in our students
- Show MT school employees they are important
- Gives kids a better educational experience with more teachers and support staff
- Higher quality education in Montana
- Positive student outcomes/success
- Higher quality education – better student outcomes – smaller staff: student ratios
- Less time and effort being spent on finances, more on educational leadership
Benefits of Participating in a Larger Pool
- Larger pool = spread risk = stabilized rates
- Larger pool of reserves
- Create a self-sustaining insurance pool that offers better rates and coverage than most current insurance plans
- Cost – negotiate with providers, risk pool
- Desired larger pool
- Bigger pool of participant – bigger bucket to navigate risk
- Leverage inherent efficiencies of the trust and larger pool of covered lives
- Unified voice to attach rising healthcare costs for better options
- Unification
- Unified voice
- Large pool to mitigate risk in premium increases
- Increased negotiation power with insurers and insurance administrators
- Risk spread out among more lives reducing claim impact on small schools
- Network of providers is larger to fit the needs of all members
- Possibility of more insurance providers
- Broader networks
- Could give school districts better leverage to get funds from state since everybody’s plan is the same
- Attract more providers because of the better risk controls in place
- Large, medium, small schools it all works for each
- Not at the mercy of large insurance companies for rates
- Alleviate financial burdens on all entities
- Ease of adding/subtracting employees
- Regarding RX & cost controlling measures to benefit the whole of the trust
- Smaller district can rely on bigger numbers to sustain public execution within MT
General Fund/Budgets
- Potentially more general funds for other commitments
- Stability in healthcare expense for district budgeting
- Schools can free up general fund $ for students
- More $ for staff and schools
- Cost savings to districts to repurposed funds
- General fund relief
- Easier to budget and manage
- Cost savings to districts/employees
- Savings to taxpayers and district as districts repurpose dollars in general fund
- Relief to general fund
- More funds for salaries (teachers), not being spent on insurance
- Better fiscal management, helping local taxpayer budgets
- Districts will have permissive levy, like all other government agencies to cover premium costs (not part of general fund budget)
Reduced/stable rates
- Cost effective
- Cost stability
- Stable costs allow for better long range planning in districts
- Stable rates – lower
- Lower rates
- Lower premiums for all
- Reduce costs
- Better rates
- Stability that allows the focus to move toward forming a group that is healthy by individual buy in
- Stability of rates
- Lower rates
- Insurance premium costs and deductibles go down
- Manageable rate increases
- Stable rate increases/decreases
- Stable rates
- Stable/predictable/affordable rates
- A long range stable plan with predictable and affordable rates
- Costs stay steady or decrease
- Stable rates due to good buy in
- Financially stable affordable
- Rate stabilization
- Rates stabilize/decrease
- Stabilization
- Costs go down across the board
- Greatly decreases variability in years
- Five year outlook with single digit percent increases
- Predictable – forecast
- Not volatile – low rate annual
Increased Benefits with Reduced Rates
- We create a system that provides affordable quality coverage for all members
- Cost drops and benefits increase for members
- With enough participants, rates can remain lower and perhaps offer better plans
- Better services at lower costs to districts
- High quality-lower cost for all schools
- Good insurance with lower rates
- Lower costs/better benefits
- Better coverage with lower premiums
- Improved coverage
- Lower healthcare costs and dramatically improved individual and family health of Montanans
- Better Benefits/cost for all districts in MT – big or small
- Excellent health care coverage
- Benefits that meets needs
- Same or better coverage
- Good coverage
- Could make coverage better for employees
- Increase benefits
- Lower costs, better quality of care
- All plans maintained or improved
- Better coverage/same coverage
- Better rates
- Better coverage
- Best quality benefits and services
- Increased quality/benefits
Increased Plans/Choices
- Better plan choices for employees
- More plan choices & price points
- HSA options
- Options/plans that can work well for a variety of people and districts
- More flexibilities available for districts to make decisions based on what is best for kids
- Plans to address needs
- Offer variable plans
- Increased options of providers
- Potentially more plan offerings
- Quality care statewide
- Dental, vision is included and fully funded with the trust
- Captive vs insured
Quality of Care/Providers
- Emphasis on quality of care
- Thorough plan & provider list
- Create competition for statewide and regional providers
- Cross section success – healthcare sector provides better service to better partners
- Efficient and high value vendors
- Consistent services
- Providers are universal for all districts and employees
- No loss of coverage due to change of insurance
- Leveraged outreach for preventative healthcare into rural communities
- Meaningful incentives for preventive and primary care
Equitable Health Insurance
- Equitable coverage options for all school sizes
- The disparity of the typical categories of “have and have nots” will diminish
- Equal access to all providers for all districts
- All schools have a voice
- Members with least desirable circumstances move toward the middle – compress existing disparity upward
- Responsive to regional differences
- When someone needs more they get more
- Equitable access for all insured
- Individuals with different needs having those needs met
- Equal access for all districts to all insurance plans
- Shared and equal premium increases and decreases by all districts
- There will be equity across the state and throughout districts. If a district has higher costs, it won’t hurt them within the trust
- Participants in plan have voice at table
Increased Wellness
- Intergenerational increase in quality of health
- Healthier population
- Health outcomes improve for members
- Possible morale booster- relieve stress within districts
- Members are healthier
- Wellness improves
- Minimize cost – maximize wellness
- Ripple effect – positive student outcomes due to increased wellness of staff
- Healthier families
- We have a robust wellness & education program to create wise consumers & healthier employees
- We have financially healthy, thriving health insurance trust that promotes health and wellness that all schools want to be a part of
- Focus on preventative and mental healthcare for all employees. Wellness matters
- Mental health of community improves as anxiety about health insurance diminishes
- Healthier staff – fewer sub/sick days
- Thriving and healthy school staff
- Happy & healthy staff
- Take out fear of being under insured
Sustainability
- Sustain a healthy trust account that can be available for many years
- Sustainable system of high quality and affordable healthcare coverage for MT’s public schools
- Sustainability
- Sustain
- Sustainability
- Better sustainability for districts
- Control of rate increase
- A sustainable and viable health insurance pool
- Sustainable
- Scale of trust can buffer variability and volatility of rates avoiding large assessments
- Sustainable/affordable rates
- Sustainable coverage for common educator illnesses
- Sustainable/long standing
- Small rate deviations
Autonomy/Local control
- Districts retain some autonomy if they choose while also improving healthcare for public school employees as a whole
- Local control is maintained by districts
- Autonomy in plan design
- Can keep arrangements with current network
- Flexibility with financing health insurance costs
- Districts with self-funded plans now that provide good benefits
- A plan that allows for flexibility at the local level
- Change the law to allow for more flexibility. Could law be amended?
- Address concerns of self funded plans
Collaboration
- Ability to work with other large groups to create better access to networks to put good healthcare back in the hands of the consumer
- Opportunity for collaboration and building of trust
- Having someone else’s bandwidth taken up with all this stuff – time, money, energy
- Understanding is gained
- Common goals
- This collaborations fosters other collaborations
- All for one and one for all
- Agreement
- Collaborative effort – Buy in by all districts (trust the process)
- Unification of all employees – admin, certified, classified – around this potentially volatile subject as it relates to negotiations and budgets
- Bridges gap between small and large schools
- All districts interested in participating
- Built trust among groups on education creates true partnerships
- Could unite larger/smaller school districts
- More trust among members
- Everyone sees an improvement
- The concerns and arguments over healthcare coverage cease and energies move on to something else
Trust Management/Governing Board
- The trust communicates well and is trusted
- The trust is so well formed and operating at a high level that we all look back and wonder what we were so concerned about.
- Insurance experts are appointed to governance board – not school employees
- Small oversight board focused on the best plan options for all and oversight to actuary and trust reserve management
- Greater oversight of management of trust
- Creation of a trust that effectively serves the majority of educators in MT
- We have a knowledgeable and dynamic director that is able to negotiate advantageous rates with providers to control costs
- The trust remains healthy and well governed and becomes the envy of teachers all across the nation
- The trust will be successful
- Local area agents
- What if we had such a good and well managed trust that we wondered what we were worried about
- Due to sound financial management the trust becomes financially stable and solvent
- The plan trust is an attractive option that draws in the majority of Montana districts
- Self-built and sustaining plan eliminates need to shop big companies
- Humans and $ share focus of decision makers
- A highly representative governing body is established which builds multiple robust health insurance plan options creating even more health plan options for all state school district employees and a healthy evolving trust grows in financial strength and responsiveness for its diverse public school district base log into the future
- Use experts and grow education around insurance and health for all employees
- Well organized and communicates
- Larger book of business
- Easier implementation within district
- Uniforms structure across state – consistency
- Create a new model for group health plan – break the status quo
- Efficiency
- To have a local agent members can visit
- Never have to pay back $40 million because plan is managed well
- We become financially stable with consistent rate increases (3-5%)
- We are willing to make hard decisions
- All non-trust members join due to operational excellence by the trust
- To have a stable, reliable trust that recognizes that the members/families are what this is about
Public/Taxpayer Trust
- Public trust increased as stewards of state $
- Public gains trust in schools
- Creates perception that socialized medicine is not scary and influences the public at large to demand insurance comparable to ours
- Trust is built between districts, associations, community, legislators, public
- Great P.R. for schools- Problem solving
- Show taxpayers our fiscal responsibility in spending funds
- Better local economics
Legislature Support for Public Education
- With success of this HB332, maybe additional legislative support for school funding
- State continues to fund public ed
- Take the $40 million from legislature
- Convince MT Legislature to put more funding towards public school initiatives that require collaborations
- The $40 million state contribution will fulfill the need for startup funds
- A ten person board made up of ten geographical parts of the state to oversee management and make sure it is member driven and not administrative
- A trust run by the people it will affect and not by the bureaucrats who it does not affect