After considerable debate Monday night, the Hughes County Commission moved in a special meeting to meet again on Nov. 29 to finalize its health insurance plan for 2022.
The commission heard presentations Monday evening from Zach Clark of Pierre’s Clark Insurance — the current agency for Hughes County’s health insurance — and Sonja Nordbye of Sioux Falls’ Risty Benefits and debated all options before ultimately deciding to meet again, allowing time to digest the plans laid out before them.
“Essentially what we’ve got is we’re talking about renewing the existing plan, and then we’ve got an option with the same insurance company to reduce the benefits to the employee, thereby reducing the cost, and then we’ve got an option that would completely change the way we’ve done our insurance — offer only one plan at a standard deductible that’s higher than our base plan and then pay that deductible down to a number that’s a little closer to where we’re offering right now,” Hipple said on Thursday.
“And do that, basically a partially-self-insured plan for the county. And then we’ve got a proposal from another entity to do something similar, where we would offer a higher-deductible, lower-cost plan and then pay the deductible down within that process by the county.”
