Moore, Troup offer explanations for how city insurance mess happened and their roles for how it was solved

QUINCY — Republican incumbent Mike Troup and independent challenger Linda Moore had similar thoughts on some issues during Tuesday night’s mayoral debate at First Christian Church, but one topic they certainly disagreed on was the city insurance mess that began in January 2023 and wasn’t resolved until July 2024.

WTAD Radio’s Mary Griffith, one of the panelists for the forum, said the insurance issue led to disruptions for city workers, confusion, hurt feelings and animosity. She asked the candidates about their involvement in the mess, what was done right and what could have been done differently.

“There were there was a lot of finger pointing at a lot of different people,” Moore said. “At the end of the day, I was sitting in a meeting. The mayor was there, there were several other executives, and I finally said, ‘You know what, somebody’s got to solve this situation.’ So I raised my hand and said, ‘I’m going to fix it.’”

Moore said she talked with medical providers, then met with “every single employee and went through every single claim over two years” to find where the money was and who was paid to resolve the issue.

“It took not what, nine months, 10 months? That was a little bit longer than I had hoped,” Moore said.

After Moore concluded her statement, Troup started his by saying, “Yeah, that’s not quite an accurate story as to what happened.” It wasn’t clear if he was responding to Moore’s reply or Griffith’s question.

Troup said the year before he was sworn in as mayor (noting that Moore was the treasurer), the city had to put $2.4 million in its self-insurance fund to pay all of the insurance claims.

“Yet, when (aldermen) established the budget for my first year, they didn’t give a penny increase to the self-insurance fund,” he said. “I found that out (during) my second month serving as mayor and said, ‘Oh my, we have a problem. What are we going to do?’

“I used my insurance skills. I went out, found a consultant (Baxter), talked to the City Council (and said), ‘We need to hire this person.’ We did it. We came up with a plan that kept the identical benefits for the employees and their dependents (at) no cost difference to the employees. And guess what? You the taxpayers, saved a million dollars.”

The issue started when the Police Benevolent and Protective Association Labor Unit 12, which represents the officers and supervisors with the Quincy Police Department, filed a grievance against the city of Quincy for failing to provide health insurance or vision coverage to all police officers. Union president Robert Megee said at the time, “It’s been an absolute nightmare.”

The Quincy City Council Meeting of the Whole was called in September 2023 to present findings on the city’s healthcare relations with Jim Baxter of Coalition Health, a health reimbursement arrangement (HRA). Baxter told the crowd in City Hall chambers that night, “I’m excellent at what I do. I’m horrible at communication.”

Aldermen then severed ties with Coalition Health, effective Jan. 1, 2024, and approved Gallagher Insurance of Quincy as the broker for the city’s health insurance program. Troup then asked Moore after she announced her decision to retire as city treasurer to work through the problems of the city’s health insurance plan.

Moore reported to aldermen on March 25, 2024, that more than 7,500 claims from 2022 and 2023 had to be re-processed. She said the errors were not the city’s fault — nor were they the fault of Coalition Health. She said the process never was fully explained to employees, and the lack of communication led to more confusion.

“(Coalition) got kicked to the curb, but they did exactly what they were hired to do,” Moore said at that meeting.

Moore said the city’s decision to change from a self-funded program to a self-insured program with a health reimbursement account saved more than a million dollars.

“That part was good,” she said. “What I would have done differently is probably started the process earlier so we could have educated our employees more on the front end. The collective bargaining agreements, most of them, I think require at least a 60-day notice whenever an insurance program changes, and we were right up to that, if I recall.

“We didn’t have enough time to explain to the employees what the difference would mean to them, so there was a lot of confusion. That confusion continued for about 14 months, and you saw a lot of things in the news about what went wrong.”

Troup said the combination of a new healthcare carrier, a new consultant, a new mayor and a new human relations person helped create the lack of communication.

“We did talk to all the union groups to let them know the change,” he said. “The other problem that we experienced, which any other employer in town that also used our same health insurance carrier also experienced, (were) errors that the health insurance carrier made in putting in what date your coverage is starting. They made that mistake with a lot of our employees. 

“But communications was the worst part. The financial result is exactly what we were hoping for.”

The candidates then went on to the next question about the intersection of 48^th and State, but Moore used part of her alotted time to address Troup’s comments about the insurance mess.

“The mayor made it sound like the treasurer runs the budget. That’s far from the truth,” Moore said. “The budget is determined by the administration, and it comes out of the mayor’s office. He is right. We faced a really tough situation that everybody had to pitch in, and we had to come up with a solution. 

“But you heard him say that the carrier changed, that it was the new HR person, that the carrier made errors. You know what? There are a lot of people who contributed to that issue, and never once — and still tonight — have I heard the mayor say, ‘I contributed to the problem.’ Somebody had to fix it, and I fixed it.”

When panelist Daniel Winn from WGEM asked if the candidates could say something nice about each other, Troup said he enjoyed working with Moore when she was the treasurer.

“She did step up and work on the health insurance. That was beneficial to not only to the employees but to the community,” he said. “The savings, though, came from work that we set up. The solution on how are we going to take this outstanding claim or dollars that are still owed the medical providers came from savings that our consultant, administration and HR negotiated with that medical provider. We took half of that savings to pay so the employees didn’t have to pay, and we could be settled and close that chapter. 

“But Linda dove into it. She’s a good person, easy to work with, and yeah, I was glad that we had that time together.”