West Seneca vote to settle debt with BlueCross ensures coverage
The Town of West Seneca averted losing its health care insurance for all employees and retirees through an eleventh-hour agreement Friday.
The Town Board voted to pay all outstanding invoices to its sole insurer, BlueCross BlueShield of Western New York, and accept the 2008-09 rates, which begin Aug. 1. The move ensures coverage for all employees and retirees in the upcoming year. West Seneca had failed to pay BlueCross since last summer, leading them to owe nearly $4 million.
BlueCross recently had sent a letter to the town stating that health care coverage for all town employees and retirees would be terminated if the amount due was not paid by the end of July.
Councilman Vincent J. Graber Jr. said that the disconnect with the health care insurer began last year. The town had failed to sign off on the January 2007 rate quoted by BlueCross because of ongoing union negotiations. When West Seneca had finished its collective bargaining agreements last summer, BlueCross had since raised the rates to $348,000 a month. The town then stopped paying Aug. 1, Graber said.
He said the town would have been in a very vulnerable position searching for a new health care insurer. Since current health care agreements are binding with local unions, the town potentially could have been forced to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars more if forced to seek an alternative insurer, Graber said.
“These are things we are not going to let happen again,” he said.
Town Supervisor Wallace C. Piotrowski said he had not received any invoices from the insurer since he took office in January. He said he had been trying to get the health care insurer to reinstate its January 2007 rates to save taxpayer money.
“I’m looking out for each of the residents,” Piotrowski said.
The ordeal continued through this month, and the amount owed piled up. Piotrowski said he continued to fight for the old rates.
John Berger Jr., CEO of CIC Benefits Group, had advised the town since April as an insurance broker on how to negotiate the developing problem. Berger was certain that monthly invoices had been sent from BlueCross, even if Piotrowski was not the one to receive them.
He said that Piotrowski had signed off on new terms with the insurer in April, but was perplexed that payments still had not been made.
“If everyone was on the same page, it might not have happened at all,” Berger said.
Councilwoman Christina Bove, who ran against Piotrowski for supervisor last fall, said neither she nor other members of the board had any knowledge of the health care insurer issues until last week, when they were notified by Berger of the impending crisis. She had assumed the bills were being paid but said the board will now work more closely with the supervisor.
Bove said the health care insurer handled the issue professionally.
“They took care of these employees by not just throwing them into the garbage,” she said.
A representative from Blue- Cross was unavailable to comment over the weekend.
In addition to protecting coverage, the board voted that Graber, also the deputy supervisor, approve next year’s rates, which had not been approved in time for the July 10 deadline.
The 2008-09 rates are only a 4 percent increase over the previous year, Berger
said.
The board also approved the town to join the Labor-Management Fund, a countywide health care consortium whose insurer is also BlueCross BlueShield. Bove said the move will save town taxpayers between $400,000 and $600,000.
