Perry County Held Hostage on Insurance Claims
</element><element id="paragraph-1" type="body"><![CDATA[ County Treasurer Bill Taylor had some good news and some bad news for the County Board. The good news- the Perry Ridge Landfill has made two quarterly payments of $42,369 and $41,670 each and made the $12,000 recycling payment. The only funds yet to be received are the fourth quarter payment which was due Jan. 15.
The bad news is that BAC, the county's former third-party health care claim administrator refuses to forward approximately 1,000 health claims to the new claims processor unless the county pays a $15 processing fee per claim.
"We already paid a $1,000 termination fee," Taylor said. "This seems like extortion to me."
The Perry County Board adopted a resolution changing their third-party health insurance administrator from BAC to Mutual Medical and their stop-loss carrier from UIC to Symetra in November.
The change in administrators produces a savings of approximately $43,000 in fixed costs.
BAC had been receiving $28,000 per month.
Taylor asked that employees be patient while the county works to resolve the issue. He has asked the State's Attorney's office how to handle the situation.
"The only two solutions I see are to pay $15,000 and I don't want to do that or to ask employees to contact their health providers and have them resubmit every claim to the new third party administrator," Taylor said.
Assistant State's Attorney Jennifer Foutch said she spoke to Alex Snedeker of Snedeker Risk Management about the problem this week. She asked him to fax copies of the contract with BAC to her, but had not yet received them.
Taylor said that BAC also will not divulge which employees have met their deductibles and out-of-pocket expenses for the year.
In addition to holding up payment on the 1,000 claims held by BAC, the county's policy is to pay claims in the order they are received. That means that the newer claims which have been submitted to the new third party administrator have not been paid either.
"There's money in the account to pay claims," Taylor said.
In other business, the board:
approved the appropriation of motor fuel tax funds for the County Highway Department and the Unit Road District. The low bidders for materials were Illini Asphalt: oil at $2.37 per gallon, chip at $20.85 per ton; Beelman: CA6 at $7.74 per ton, small rip rap at $11.94 per ton and large rip rap at $15.24 per ton; Barr Trucking: CA1 at $7.99 per ton and CA5 at $7.99 per ton. The only difference between the County and Unit Road Dist. bids is that the Unit District uses CA7. The low bidder for CA7 was Beelman at $8.63 per ton. County Engineer Doug Bishop was very pleased with the bids. He had expected an increase, but the price remained the same as the previous year.
approved a zoning ordinance amendment granting re-zoning of 42 acres of land on the west side of Sacred Heart Cemetery Rd. from agricultural to residential. The landowner, Carol A. Smith, plans to break the ground into 5.25 acre parcels.
approved a special use permit for Rodney Doerr to place a 2009 mobile home on a 95 acre parcel on the south side of East Park Street Road.