Editor

Having its 6,000 or so employees pay a portion of their premiums could be one way the Osceola County School District deals with up to a 12 percent anticipated increase in the cost of providing health insurance.

Osceola County School Board members April 27 discussed several options for dealing with the increased costs, from requiring employees to pay up to 40 percent of the premium for individual coverage to upping co-pays for prescriptions or some combination of changes, all in an effort to find approximately $5.2 million in savings for this budget item.

Board Chairman John McKay said the district likely would see a similar increase next year as well and that the higher costs could mean less coverage down the road for school employees.

“Next year we may have another $6 million increase; it is hard for me to believe there isn’t something out there to give us more options,” McKay said.

One combination of options considered by the board, which included requiring employees to pay 40 percent of their premiums as well as more for prescriptions, would produce savings of $3.8 million, still $1.33 million short of the target.

“Nothing in this is cast in stone,” Superintendent Michael A. Grego said. “The $5.168 million is our target to look at to find offsetting savings. Our intent is to at least break even.”

One area that the district likely will not pursue for now is its own health care clinic, following a feasibility study and a request for proposals from health care providers that showed it would not save the district money, mainly because the cost of a visit to a district primary care physician would be considerably higher when compared to the private sector.

However, if the various municipalities in the county – including the county and the city of Kissimmee – could collaborate on a clinic, school officials said, costs might come down as the scale of the program increased. In addition, changes to employees’ current health coverage might also improve the feasibility of a clinic.

“I don’t see numbers here that impress,” School Board Member Cindy Hartig said. “But if the county and cities are interested in doing this, maybe the numbers would look better.”

Hartig also said the location of a clinic would preclude some district employees from using it.

“Our people (employees) are all over the county. People in Poinciana wouldn’t want to come to Bill Beck Boulevard (School District headquarters in Kissimmee) for a doctor’s appointment,” Hartig said.

The superintendent also said the district, which is self-insured now, has a very efficient claim system, which is one of the reasons the proposals for a clinic didn’t show much in the way of savings.

In other news:

• The School Board at its meeting April 20 agreed to revisit the board practice of reimbursing its members for cell phone costs related to district business, if requested to do so. At the meeting, board members John McKay and David Stone said they used their own phones for district business at times but have never sought reimbursement.

Member Cindy Hartig raised the issue, suggesting that perhaps the district ought to issue the cell phones for member use.