Fairfax County was able to hold down premium increases and expand services for its employee health care plans this year as a result of rebidding contracts for providers, according to the county’s spokeswoman.
The county solicited new proposals for health care providers last year, but selected the same firms to offer benefits to its nearly 11,000 employees, according to spokeswoman Merni Fitzgerald. The new plans went into effect at the beginning of the year.
The county offers four health care plans: Carefirst Bluechoice POS; BluePreferred PPO; CIGNA Open Access Plus; and Kaiser Permanente HMO. Only the HMO showed a slight premium increase, Fitzgerald said.
New this year is a vision plan offered through Davis Vision Inc., which covers yearly routine eye examinations and pays partially for glasses or contact lenses.
“We were able to do that because of the money we didn’t spend elsewhere in the contract,” she said.
In the fiscal 2007 budget, Fairfax supervisors allocated a total of $59 million for health insurance, an increase of $2.8 million over the previous year. The annual increase of health care expenditures has, however, grown progressively smaller in recent years, according to budget figures.
