Flexible Compensation Benefits Committee
Tuesday, Oct. 15, 2002
Conference Room, Wellness Center
Minutes

Members Present:  Blackburn, Fox, Henderson, Lehenbauer, Morris, Payne, Reed, Stromberg, and Wilguess

Members Absent: Hare,  Harrison, Poole

Ad Hoc, Ex Officio members and Guests Present:  Barfield, Blakely, Oehrtman, Purdie, Matoy, Wells.

There being no objections the agenda was accepted by acclamation.

The minutes were approved as corrected

Several committee members reported on a meeting with Brian Maddy from the OU Health Sciences Center about their direct contracting health care plan.   OU contracts with Schaller Anderson as a Third Party Administrator (TPA) to manage the plan.  OU (and Schaller Anderson) would like to increase their buying power to negotiate contracts by adding more schools to the program.  They have talked with several schools about joining them.  The funds of each institution would be maintained separately, so each institution would be self insured and would use the same TPA if they joined the program.  Currently, they have direct contracts with providers in Norman and Oklahoma City only.  They use PPO Oklahoma network for other areas.    OU likes the flexibility of being self insured and managing and designing their own plan as compared with other options that they have reviewed.  Matoy offered to arrange for OSEEGIB to give a similar presentation to the same group of individuals who attended the meeting with OU.

Lehenbauer commented that because OSU is geographical wide spread, negotiating contracted fee structures with healthcare providers is much more difficult. 

Wells noted that OSU used PPO Oklahoma for our network PPO when we were self insured prior to joining OSEEGIB in 1999.  Because of Stillwater's isolation and the local medical community’s solidarity, negotiation of fee schedules is harder.

Henderson brought questions from the Faculty Council’s Flexible Benefits Committee.  The committee asked what was the usual process of investigation of different health insurance plans and if HealthChoice was dropped could the university retain access to the dental plan.

Wells distributed copies of the survey that was presented to employees in 1998 regarding health care options prior to changing to OSEEGIB.  Employees did not like any of the options, but the majority voted in favor of a change to OSEEGIB and made comments to the effect that they viewed it as the "lesser of the evils."

Barfield felt another bid for health insurance was called for.

Wells cautioned that if OSU left OSEEGIB, we probably would not be welcomed back if we became unhappy with other arrangements and suggested that we should be thorough in our evaluation of options should we decide to change.  Wells shared claims/premium statistics that we obtained from OSEEGIB.  Since OSEEGIB reports on an incurred basis rather than a paid basis, claims data must be at least a year old to be meaningful.  After one year, OSEEGIB indicated that they have paid 95% of claims that were incurred the prior year, so this is why it takes a year to have meaningful claims data.   When we were self-insured with American Fidelity, we used more current data for projections as American Fidelity maintained reporting to us on a "paid" basis and also reported claims runoff twice annually.   Because of the delayed claims data with OSEEGIB, projections are more challenging to determine our probably loss ratio and necessary premium structure should we change plans.

The recommendation to increase retiree’s life insurance from $4,000 to $10,000 is still under review.  The administration likes the idea but the funds are not available.

Matoy distributed an update of the committee’s charge from the administration.

Dr. Bosserman would like campus review of the proposed 457b plan and the uncapping of sick leave.  He is still studying the recommendation for the cafeteria plan.

Meeting was adjourned.