Last night at the Kenai Peninsula School District Board of Education meeting the members discussed possible options to save the district money via an opt out option in their health care plan.
Assistant Superintendent Dave Jones discussed the complex decisions about double coverage which are when employees who are married want to opt out of contributing to the health care fund because they are covered by their spouses coverage from the district.
Jones: “In previous discussions it had been allow the double coverage to opt out. Well the difference with the double coverage is that its not a true opt out because what happens is that everybody that was covered under the plan when both of them are in still remain in the plan for claims purposes but on the contribution or on the revenue side now instead of there being contributions for both, there’s only contributions for one of them and that’s how the deficit is created.”
The true opt out, Jones explained is when a spouse is covered by another outside insurance and would choose to opt out of the district’s health care plan.
The Board of Education plans to have their broker draft up the impacts of having only people with outside coverage opt out.