Health insurance once again an issue for the district

CLINTONVILLE – The Clintonville School District is once again dealing with a potentially large increase in the cost of health insurance for its employees.
During the Superintendent’s Report at the Clintonville Board of Education’s March 23 meeting, Clintonville Superintendent Troy Kuhn told the board that the district’s initial health insurance renewal for next year came back with an estimated increase of 30%-50%.
“I don’t think I’m going to bring to the board a $900,000 increase to keep the insurance that we have,” Kuhn said. “I don’t think that is wise of me.”
The district currently offers a broad and a focus network for health insurance, but there is also a select network available, Kuhn said.
“We’re looking at moving to offer the focus and the select,” Kuhn said.

If the district does that, and then implements a co-pay for the focus network, the health insurance increase is estimated to be in the 3%-10% range.
“Which I think is much more in our range,” Kuhn said. “It’s not that we’re getting rid of the care, we’re not kicking anybody off, it’s just that we would have to focus our network.”
Kuhn added that the district is hoping that some employees switch to the Samaritan program.
“Which would take the high-cost claimants off of our insurance, which would benefit us,” Kuhn said.
Other options have been researched by the district, Kuhn said.
He added that presentations about those options will be made to the board in the future.