Coolidge benefit costs fly past budget
By Joey Chenoweth | Coolidge Examiner
About a year ago, the Coolidge City Council agreed to take on more risk with the way the city pays for employee benefits, and now they are paying the price.
Rebecca Chang of The Mahoney Group presented council on Nov. 24 with an update on how the new self-funding benefits package has fared, and the news wasn’t good. Costs to the city have come in $216, 899.54 over expectations from just four months in 2014, an amount that must be taken out of the general fund using sales tax revenue that has come in above projections.
The increased costs come from a number of sources. Two employees have gone through extensive medical treatment that racked up the deductibles. Also, employees have been utilizing the hospital in Florence-Anthem. That hospital has been recovering from bankruptcy, which means it did not have proper contracts with the plan’s carriers. So employees who went to the Florence hospital were going out of the network, leading to additional costs.
