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Dale Lee (WVEA); Bob Brown (WV School Service Personnel Association)
Excerpt
During a succinct, eight-minute meeting, members of the West Virginia Public Employees Insurance Agency Finance Board unanimously approved a freeze on PEIA health insurance premiums and benefits for the 2018-19 plan year.
“For one year, beginning in July of this year, benefits and premiums will be exactly as they are today,” PEIA Executive Director Ted Cheatham said of the freeze, which was called for by Gov. Jim Justice.
“How many companies do you know that don’t have a change in benefits from year to year?” Cheatham added.
The freeze leaves a $29 million hole in PEIA’s 2018-19 budget, a hole that would have been filled under the 2018-19 benefits plan approved in December by increasing premiums on some insurees, primarily through a controversial provision to use total family income to set premiums for family and employee and spouse coverage.
