All right, it's uh 515, and we'll call this informal meeting of the Joplin City Council uh to order for October 5th.

And uh welcome everyone who is here uh on the agenda of the semi-annual insurance update.

Ms.

Haas, leading us off.

Yes, sir.

Good evening, Mayor, council.

Um I'm gonna kind of slow play it while uh Drew gets the PowerPoint up, but uh want to give you a little history.

Uh so Siegel has been the city's insurance uh consultant uh since 2010.

Um they have helped us tremendously.

Um they help us do our insurance bid uh for our insurance coverage.

Um

and they did that this the most recent time was in 2025, uh which was effective on January 1st of 2026.

Those bids are good for five years.

Uh however, um some of them the rates change during that five-year period, uh, but uh we stay with the same carriers for that those five years.

Um I can tell you that SEGO has saved the city and employees more money than their fees.

Um and at the same time they uh managed uh when we went to UMR they managed to get open access for our employees uh so we can go to Mercy and uh Freeman, uh which had been requested by Citical City Council for many many years.

Uh so a lot of good stuff uh all uh really because of Siegel and the work that they

do.

Um insurance insurance and retirement are really the two most expensive benefits that the city provides.

Uh yet it's really crucial that we have good those two benefits are are good uh so that we can attract and retain employees.

Uh so that's why we present this information to you uh to let you know uh on the health insurance.

Um I will say that Kim's gonna give give you all some very good news uh for the city uh for next year, but Siegel as a whole, they are seeing um much larger increases than uh what you're gonna see for the city.

Uh somewhere around 15 percent.

Most most people are uh seeing around 15 percent increases.

Also, we met uh the wellness committee uh heard from UMR today, and they said the same thing.

They are seeing roughly 15 percent increases.

So uh I do just want to mention that so that we can be prepared for the future.

Uh while it's uh not going to hint us in 2027, um it could hit us in the future.

So um I think you all know Kim Wixen with Siegel and and Brian Hunter.

Um, but I'll go ahead and turn it over to Kim, and when she's done, we'll be happy to answer any question.

Ms.

Wixham, well welcome.

Glad to have you here this evening.

Yeah, and I have a smile on my face because I do have I I feel like very very good news to present today.

So let's get started.

It's a long agenda, it's just all of the exhibits that we have.

Um we'll go over the the most critical ones during this part of the presentation.

So we wanted to kick it off with the executive summary.

This is where we we start every year.

Um we are projecting a small deficit of $56,900, but that's actually 0.7% from budget.

So it it I almost feel like that's basically on budget.

So that's what we're um expecting for this upcoming for the end of 2026 to fall.

Um and based on our evaluation, we actually look at three years of claims data.

That just helps within a three-year period.

You might have some dips and you might have some highs, so that helps to to keep the rates more stable.

Um, and we are projecting a 5.7% um increase for next year.

Uh like Leslie said, I am seeing 10 to 15 percent um increases for a lot of my actually all of my clients, the city is getting the best renewal of all of my clients to date.

So that's why I'm saying it's really good news.

And I think you probably have heard in the news about health care going up at very high high rate.

Um, so we're glad that we're coming in at that 5.7 percent for um for our medical and prescription drug costs.

And we did also um just to kind of highlight the performance of the city overall um compared to just general trend assumptions.

We've included the back from 2015 to 2027, what the average medical prescription drug and overall trend increase, projected trend increase was to what the city's specific increases have been.

And you can see there's out of 10 out of 13 years, we were below those projections, and in the last five years, we've been we've been under those projections for the last five years.

So the wellness uh group has done a great job in trying in managing these expenses and really the city overall with the help of Leslie.

We did um at our last meeting, we talked about the new high deductible health plan.

So we just wanted to make sure everyone was aware we are moving forward, we're implementing that.

So employees will now have an option between the current PPO plan, and right now, because of the rate of increase, we're not recommending any changes to that plan, so keeping it as it is today, and then offering the new high deductible health plan with the health savings account.

And uh, we are implementing the plan design that we that we presented at the last meeting and was approved.

So we are currently working on getting that implemented.

One thing to note is that it is actually equivalent to our current PPO plan.