Insurance rep meeting with city employees who still have coverage issues

QUINCY — Mayor Mike Troup told the Quincy City Council a representative of Coalition Health is in town all week to meet with any city employees who may still be having problems with their insurance coverage.

Blue Cross Blue Shield handles the primary plan and Coalition Health is the secondary provider. Open enrollment information provided to employees stated the new plans were effective Jan. 1 and premiums deducted from employees’ payroll checks starting on Jan. 5 — their first paycheck of the new year.

Since the first of the new year, several city employees have said they’ve been going to local medical providers and have been told they do not have coverage.

Troup said it is “a complicated situation”.

Troup reiterated the city’s coverage is in place and all employees and their family members who are signed up, which is about 500 people according to Troup, are covered. He also said Coalition Health “who helps manage all of this” was not to blame for the problems and the city has examples of data some of the medical providers and Blue Cross Blue Shield have entered that is not correct.

“Insurance companies, you know they’ve got thousands of employees, not all of them are perfect and some of them make mistakes and we’ve had to correct issues inside the insurance companies,” Troup said. “Our group at Coalition are actually the people that have found these errors and worked to correct them.

Troup said Jim Baxter with Coalition Health is meeting with any employees this week who have had issues with the change and work on “reconciliation for all of their (insurance) activities through 12/31/22 and answer any questions” and asked employees for a little more patience.

Alderman Greg Fletcher (R-1st Ward) asked Troup if the city was past employees being told they didn’t have coverage.

“We’re past that, but there are still some medical providers who have passed that along to our employees incorrectly,” Troup said.

Alderman Mike Farha (R-4th Ward) said the new plan was “rolled out extremely poorly”.