Jackson To Cover Five Percent Increase In County Employee Insurance

Jackson County will cover the cost of a five percent health insurance increase for county employees.

Mayor Randy Heady said that the state’s insurance plan has seen an increase in premiums due to the pandemic. Heady said that the county wanted to do what it could to prevent that increase from affecting its employees.

“By adding this $19 a month to their insurance premiums, in a lot of cases, you’re eating up a lot of the raises that you just turned around and gave them,” Heady said. “So my perspective, and I appreciate the commission backing me up, was that I didn’t want to pass that on to them.”

Heady said that there are approximately 38 employees covered by the county and that he expects it to grow to around 45 with open enrollment. He said that the cost to the county will total some $10,000 to $12,000. Heady said that the funding is available and covered in this year’s budget

“We did forecast an increase when we did the budget this year,” Heady said. “But you still need to run that through the commission so that everybody is on board and understands what the per month portion of the county per employee, we need to have that in writing.”

Heady said the increase goes into effect on January 1st.