Joint committee studies state employee insurance plans

OKLAHOMA CITY – A joint committee of Senate and House members met Tuesday to study state employee insurance plans and how to better serve the health needs of state and education employees while also controlling health care costs to the state. The study was requested by Sen. Kim David, Chair of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Health and Human Services, and Rep. Michael Rogers, R-Broken Arrow.

“We wanted to look at the current structure of Oklahoma’s different plans and specifically the difference between the state’s self-funded plan, HealthChoice, and the private insurer market,” said David, R-Porter. “We need to know why we’re self-funded, if there’s a benefit in that, what type of competition we have with the private plans and why we’re not able to curb the ever increasing costs of our health insurance.”

She pointed out that HealthChoice raised rates by five percent last year and are raising them an additional eight percent in 2017.

Rogers said he was concerned about the astronomical costs of insuring the state’s school employees.

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