PUD considers health care

Wahkiakum Public Utility District commissioners will pass the gavel in their usual rotation in 2012. Commissioners agreed that Gene Healy will be president, Bob Jungers, vice-president, and Dennis Reid, secretary.

The PUD did routine business and heard a breakdown of their health care costs from their health-insurance manager, Public Utility Risk Management Services administrator Richard Rodruck.

Reid requested that the recently adopted code of conduct be distributed each January. “I’m used to signing a new one at the first of each year,” he said, referring to his years in the banking industry.

The board approved a mission statement, which said they wanted “to provide the most reliable electric and water service at the most reasonable cost along with quality customer service to the District’s ratepayers.” Reid requested that the mission statement be posted and added to stationary, websites and bills. Healy asked to review the design of the stationary.

General Manager Tramblie and Auditor Erin Wilson had no reports this month.

During his commissioner report Jungers described a sales presentation by Elster, a manufacturer of automated meter readers and automated monitoring infrastucture, that he attended with Tramblie.

“It’s the same stuff we’ve heard before,” Jungers said. In addition to equipment, servers cost about $100,000 or a district can pay $20,000 as an initial licensing fee, with a minimum of $1,000 per month, based on the number of meters.

Jungers said, “The technology is here now, and it could be applied effectively and reliably, but it is still beyond the benefit of cost return.”

“I think it will be cost effective soon,” Tramblie said.

The automatic meter reading technology not only frees employees from on the ground meter reading, it can communicate with the customer, regarding the load at various times of day, so the customer could avoid usage at peak use times.

Tramblie said, “The homeowner could monitor their loads.”

Richard Rodruck, administrator of Public Utility Risk Management Services (PURMS), came to describe how the PUD’s self-insurance risk pool works.

PURMS consists of 12 utilities. Each sets its own health care plan, and then contributes to the pool based on the expenses incurred by its employees each month.

This year, PUD health costs have been high, because about eight people have been sick, Rodruck said.

The PUD has 14 employees and ensures about 46 or 47 people. Eight of those insured have incurred about 50 percent of the PUD’s health care expenses. Rodruck said that is normal for “three to five percent of the total insured population to cost half the money of benefits paid.”

“Some (of your) people have been sick—that’s what it’s there for,” Rodruck said.

The PUD has a $247,000 stop-loss, after which the pool pays claims, which was reached in mid-November this year.

Each Wahkiakum PUD employee has three dependents, which is higher than the PURMS average of two. In a larger utility, there might be more single persons, Rodruck said.

The highest employee plan in the risk pool pays about $1600 per employee; the group average is about $1100 per month. The PUD pays about $1500 per month per insured.

Community member Lee Tischer said Wahkiakum County pays $860 per month toward each employee’s health care and provides four plans of varying additional cost to the employee. The PUD is too small for a cafeteria plan, Rodruck said.

Rodruck said the PUD’s coverage was “a little rich,” compared to other districts in the pool. He said he found the PUD could save about three percent by using the leanest plan in the pool.

With Rodruck’s assertion that health care costs have been going up about six to eight per cent per year, commissioners discussed ways they might reduce the cost of health insurance for the utility.

Rodruck said raising copays does little to generate significant savings. Increasing copays and setting deductibles could reduce costs, he said. The PUD has a $15 co-pay, and a network provider plan.

When Healy said, “We want to give the best health care insurance we can,” Jungers replied, “…the most we have to, to provide the most reliable service to the ratepayers.”

PURMS has 12 utilities and covers 800 employees, with a total of about 2100 insured. Averages about $1100 per employee per month and by rule must have about $2.2 million in reserve or three months of claims experience.

The rates utilities pay are driven by the specific charges incurred by the individuals they are covering.

For Healy, “if health care costs are 25 percent of our expenses, as a ratepayer I’d be concerned. As health care costs keep increasing, at what point is it unbearable to the ratepayers?”

The board met in executive session for 10 minutes for union negotiation and about 50 minutes for personnel evaluation of Tramblie.