MONTICELLO  — Employees of the Village of Monticello may be seeing a change to their healthcare as interest was expressed in switching health insurance policies from New York State Health Insurance Program (NYSHIP) to MVP. 

The interest was sparked by an increasing annual cost to the municipality, and was discussed following a public hearing on July 17.

The Vice President of Employee Benefits for the Reis Group in Albany, Chad Granger, touched upon the differences between the current plan and the MVP plan.

“There are two trade-offs that the employees would be giving up, if you want to look at it that way,” explained Granger. “There are other things they are going to gain if they make this change.”

It was stated that with MVP, there is no out-of-pocket expense for the Village employees. Additionally, premiums were said to be able to be lowered in comparison to the NYSHIP Plan.

“With the State’s plan, rates have increased year over year. They have only two options it’s either you’re a single,” explained Granger, “If you’re covering any dependents, you have to pay the full family rate which is almost $40,000 a year these days.”

He explained that with the MVP rate, it could be broken down.

Village employees would have a single, couple, parent-child and family rates.

According to Granger, these pricing options allow the overall cost to go down.

However, this would not cover planned out-of-network benefits, which would be covered only in an emergency. There is also no feature-fertilization coverage, either.

“It would provide really excellent benefits, no out-of-pocket cost until they hit their deductible and then they only have some copays for prescriptions,” said Granger. “It significantly lowers the overall premium and cost for the insurance.”

No other input was presented for the remainder of the public comment. 

Village Attorney Michael Sussman stated that the Board should give thought and determine whether they want this to be part of negotiation with the Unions.

A motion to continue negotiations with the Unions was made by Trustee Theodore Hutchins and seconded by Trustee Gordon Jenkins. This was unanimously approved by the Board.