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News
Your source on union-negotiated health care benefits
What’s New this Open Enrollment? More HMOs
available
Aetna is back, Kaiser and SummaCare are gone
April
18, 2005 - Come July 1, 2005, the number of counties with only
1 HMO available to state employees will shrink from 63 to 12.
And the number of counties with no HMO
will shrink from 5 to 2.
Aetna, an HMO which once had 20,000
state employees enrolled, will be available again on July 1 in
70 counties.
Meanwhile, July, Kaiser and SummaCare will no longer
be offered to state employees in the NE part of the state.
All of these changes came about as a result
of the HMO re-bidding process. Every two years the state, in
conjunction with the Joint Health Care Committee (JHCC),
issues a Request for Proposal to determine which HMOs will be offered
to state employees.
Marianne Steger, OCSEA Director of Health Care
Policy, advises, "This year’s bidding process saw
more competition among the HMOs than previous years had seen. While this
means more employees will have more HMO options, some employees who have
been long-time enrollees in Kaiser will have to switch plans."
Steger co-chairs the JHCC for
Labor.
Many health care open enrollment fairs
are scheduled throughout the state between April 19 and 30. Such
fairs provide an excellent opportunity to learn more about benefit choices
from the health plans’ representatives.
A complete schedule of dates and locations was distributed
with your paycheck on April 2 and published in the open enrollment edition
of Pathways, which will be distributed in mid-April. In addition, please
look for posters identifying the fair(s) closest to your work location.
See Related
Medco is back for Ohio Med
Enrollees July 1st
Medical Mutual will keep
Administering the Ohio Med PPO
Kaiser enrollees options;
Chart below compares HMOs, Ohio Med PPO
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