City sees insurance increase
City of Medford employees will be seeing a jump in their out-of-pocket expense for health care as the city absorbs a sizable increase in premiums driven by high usage rates.
At Monday’s city council meeting, council members approved renewing with Security Health Plan with a renewal quote of a 24.36% increase over the 2024 premium year.
“That was quite an increase,” said council member Laura Holmes.
City clerk Ashley Lemke noted that Security had originally presented a 29% premium increase and through negotiations with the insurance cooperative the city is part of, they were able to get it lowered to a 25% increase. The city is applying an additional $40,000 from its Health Insurance Reserve Account to reduce the impact of the premium increase to the 24.36% level. The reserve funds are from when the city joined the insurance cooperative several years ago and saw a large savings in its insurance expenses. Those funds were set aside to mitigate the impact of future increases.
City employees pay 15% of their insurance premium with the city picking up the remaining 85%. Lemke noted that Security wanted to quote out what individual groups would have for increases rather than as part of the cooperative. She said the city would not have gained anything by going on its own.
Under the city’s insurance, single plans have a $2,000 deductible with a prescription deductible of $1,000.
See CITY on page 3 Family plan options have a deductible of $4,000 with a prescription deductible of $2,000.
New this year for the city employees will be the option of the “Premier” plan versus the “Enrich” plan. Premier is identical to what the employees already have and allows them to see providers in both Aspirus and Marshfield Clinic systems. The Enrich plan is a narrower network only allowing providers from Marshfield Clinic and UWHealth. The difference in cost to employees is about $16.20 per month for single plans and $35.84 per month for employee plus spouse plans. For family plans, the difference is $48.88 per month.
Other plan changes include the implementation of a $500 copay for use of the emergency room that is separate from the deductible, as well as an agreement with Taylored Family Care to encourage greater utilization of those services. Employees going to that independent provider will pay $50 per visit out of pocket with the clinic charging the health cooperative for additional costs beyond that amount. The cooperative will cover up to $500 of these costs per month and after that the city will pick up the difference.
The incentive to doing this is for the city to reduce its overall usage rates because the private pay visits do not count toward the insurance premiums.
“Utilization was high across the co-op. By going with Taylored Family Care we will reduce some of the utilization,” Lemke said. The city’s utilization rate for the past year was 120%.
Lemke noted that there are some higher dollar claims going on currently.
“Healthcare is a challenge,” said council member Mike Bub. He noted that even with this year’s jump, the city is still ahead of where it would have been with premiums had they not joined.
Mayor Mike Wellner said a key will be to reduce the number of emergency room visits. “If you can wait, don’t go to the emergency room unless you have to,” Wellner said.
A challenge in Medford has been that until relatively recently there was no walk-in care option with Aspirus. Bub noted that with a $500 copay, there would be an incentive to go to Wausau or Marshfield for walk-in care or private pay options rather than going to the emergency room.
“A lot of it boils down to employee education,” Lemke said. “You don’t always have to run to the emergency room.”
In related employee benefits action, the council members approved renewing the dental insurance plan with Delta Dental with a 2% increase in premiums and approved keeping the city’s health savings account payments the same as in 2024 at $2,000 for single plans and $4,000 for other plans.
The city council also approved giving city employees a 3% pay raise for 2025. This is for all city employees other than the library. The library board sets the wages for library employees.
During a committee of the whole meeting held after the council meeting, members recommended adopting the updated employee benefit plan document, which the city is required to maintain and adjust each year with changes.
In other business, council members:
• Approved a rezoning request for Lon Engen for 1117 S. 8th St. from R-1 residential to C-1 commercial use. The lot is the location of where a home burned down and was demolished. It will continued to be used for heavy equipment rental and for a vehicle sales lot.
• Approved placing $759.84 in delinquent homeowner utilities, $2,584.30 in delinquent tenant utilities and $893.14 in delinquent commercial utilities onto the city tax roll to be levied against the property owners. Last year the city placed $5,601 in delinquent utilities on the tax roll. Lemke noted that many of these are more recent additions rather than being long-term delinquencies.
• Approved naming the mayor, city coordinator, city clerk and treasurer to serve as the taxi selection committee. Federal law prohibits the council from selecting the tax service provider. Every five years the taxi program must be put out for bid in order to qualify to continue with the shared ride grant funding.
• Approved an application for the Medford Area Chamber of Commerce to hold a fireworks display at 7:15 p.m. on Friday, Nov. 29 as part of the community Holiday Kickoff celebration. There will also be a bonfire in the city park by the Bandshell as part of the celebration.
• Approved hiring Centennial Hall to provide catering for an employee holiday lunch to be held on Wednesday, Dec. 11 at noon. The cost is $585 plus a 10% gratuity. The city had also gotten quotes from BS Bar and Catering and Cravings. As of Monday’s meeting 64 North had not replied to the request for a quote. The quotes are estimates based on 45 people being served.
• Recommended setting the charge for private outside groups for city public works labor and equipment charges at $67.98 per hour for 2025, up form $66 per hour currently. For work done internally within city departments the cost will go from $48.21 to $49.66 per hour. This reflects the total cost with wages and benefits of the employee time.
• Received an update from the Nov. 5 general election. There were 2,275 voters in the city, this was up 90 voters from the past presidential election in 2020. Lemke reported the total number represented 65% of total eligible voters in the city. She said that of actual registered voters there was a 98% voter turnout. The city issued 923 absentee ballots and 907 were returned. Of the 923 absentee ballots, 544 voted in person the week before the election. Lemke reported that about 43% of the voters used the Express Vote option.
• This was the first major election with the use of the electronic poll books and Lemke reported that things went smoothly. The significant savings in time came when submitting the required paperwork after the election. She noted that she was done in well under an hour compared to the days she said it would have taken using the old system. Lemke noted that one of the challenges has been to get people to “unlearn” past practices when going to the polling stations. With the electronic poll books, there is no need to have people go to different stations by ward or last name.
