Jamestown City Council members discuss Medicare Advantage Program budget issues (October 21, 2024)
A program to move city retirees from city health insurance to a Medicare program that was supposed to save the city $1.3 million is currently costing the city instead.
In 2017, the Teresi administration had a contract with the state that would provide $17,000 each to enrollees in the city healthcare plan between the ages of 65-69, $12,000 for those between the age of 70 and 74, $8,000 for those between the age of 75 and 79, and $3,000 for anyone 80 and over to move over to a non-city plan. In return, the state’s Financial Restructuring Board would reimburse the city up to $1.5 million.
City Comptroller Ericka Thomas said while not many signed up for that program at that time, the city did receive a $200,000 reimbursement from the state.
In 2021, a committee made up of city administration, active and retired employees worked to create a program where retirees age 65 and older and their spouses would voluntarily move from city health insurance to the Medicare supplement program. Retirees who opted in had one year to decide to move back to the city’s plan. They also received health insurance free for five years and were then locked into the rate they were paying in 2021 for the remainder of their time on the new plan. That plan was approved by City Council in 2021.
Thomas said that up to 155 of the more than 300 eligible retirees had taken advantage of the plan, “However, that was not a contract or a program that the state was aware of, so they were kind of surprised when I mentioned that. So, now we have to justify all of this and they have to tell me whether we have to write a new contract.. one.. two contracts.. can we extend the original.”
Council Member at Large Jeff Russell, who served on the committee in 2021, said he was personally upset, saying the committee thought the program would save taxpayers money, “You’d just assume if the program is put together by the prior administration to save money that the prior administration is going to go after those monies and we shouldn’t have to babysit them to go after those monies. So, now we have a million dollars left on the table.”
Russell said the $1.3 million would have made a big difference in the proposed budget.
Council President Tony Dolce agreed, saying the reimbursement would have wiped out the proposed 7.79% tax increase in the 2025 budget, “It’s not our job to micromanage and make phone calls to all these companies, the state, and everything else. We make, and I hate to use the word, assumption that the people here working are giving us accurate data, accurate numbers, and follow through and do what they say they’re going to do.”
Dolce requested that Corporation Counsel Elliot Raimondo look into the issue from a legal sense.
Thomas emphasized that if the city is able to get the reimbursement, that it’ll be a one-shot revenue, so it can’t be counted on for future budgets.
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