Manchester Board Fails To Approve Health Carrier Change

A motion to change the health insurance carrier for the Manchester Township School District failed Tuesday night in a tie vote.

Before a considerably smaller audience than the crowd that packed the media center at Ridgeway Elementary School two weeks ago, the Manchester Township Board of Education considered the motion it had tabled two weeks ago to change carriers.

The district has had health insurance through Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield for a number of years. But earlier this month the district’s business administrator, Craig Lorentzen, met with the leadership of the district’s various unions to tell them the district was considering changing health insurance carriers due to a large increase sought by Horizon.

The board was to act on the change, recommended by its insurance broker, Brown and Brown, on May 13, but the plan for a vote was pulled from the agenda after the unions’ leadership objected, seeking time to examine and compare the coverage offered by AmeriHealth to what they already had under Horizon.

The move would have saved the district $220,000, as the increase in the cost of the benefits under AmeriHealth was 6 percent for the health benefits and 1 percent on the prescription plan. Under Horizon, the increase was 8.5 percent on the benefits and 3 percent on the prescriptions.

Manchester Township district employees pay anywhere from 25 to as much as 40 percent of the cost of their health insurance premiums, with most in the 30 to 35 percent range.

Tuesday night, having listened to presentations and researched the differences, teachers were prepared -- and registered their objections with the board.

The primary objection, the teachers said, was that many of the doctors they now use are not in the AmeriHealth network -- meaning many would have to seek new doctors; those needing ongoing treatment would be faced with a disruption of care, they said.

“Some of our members have asked why (doctors) don’t take AmeriHealth and were told it’s because they take too long to pay,” Barbara, an elementary-level teacher, said.

“I’ve been told that no (doctor) needs to take AmeriHealth unless they have no patients,” high school teacher Jennifer Ansbach said. ”This is going to cause real hardship to people in this district who give their best to this district.”

AmeriHealth representative Michael Murphy said the company had experienced issues after an influx of new patients under the Affordable Care Act, but that it had made great strides to address those issues. He also said the company was working to get more doctors to join its network.

Jill Roman, manager of public affairs for AmeriHealth, said in an email to the Patch on June 2 that the company’s plans “offer access to every acute care hospital in the state except for one.”

“We have approximately 40,000 physicians and other health care professionals in our network, which is one of the largest in the state,” she said.

“If you have a doctor you use who’s not in the network, let us know; we will be recruiting providers to join our network,” Murphy told the teachers at the Board of Education meeting.

“I feel like we’re being used to expand your network,” Ansbach said.

To change health insurance carriers, the district is required by law to replace it with one that offers benefits that are equal to or better than what is currently being provided.

Murphy said AmeriHealth would make sure that every single benefit was matched.

But the teachers said that because their current providers do not accept AmeriHealth insurance, matching the benefits does not solve the problem.

“I feel like I’m in the desert and you’re taking away my all-terrain vehicle and giving me a speedboat, and telling me it holds the same number of passengers so it should work just fine,” Ansbach said. “We can’t use it here.”

“I feel like I’m being used as a guinea pig,” she said.

“We’re just asking to be treated with respect and dignity and not like a dollar sign,” said Barbara, the elementary teacher.

When it came to the vote, board members Mary Walter and Jackie Bermudez voted in favor of the change to AmeriHealth; Jaqueline Paolillo and James Griffin voted no, and the remainder of the board -- Jennifer Hudak, Ken Oliver, James Pate and Donald Webster -- all abstained due to having family members in the district.

Lorentzen said the options now are for the board to meet again to vote on a different provider or to accept the Horizon offer and move forward. Accepting the Horizon offer means finding places to cut $220,000 from the budget to make up the difference.

No additional meetings were scheduled last night before the next regularly scheduled meeting on June 18, however, and there was no talk of doing so among the board members after the second executive session.

“We have a lot of work to do in the next few weeks” before the start of the 2015-16 budget year, Lorentzen said.