Best Practices Worksheet CY 2014/SFY2015

Jackson Township (Ocean)

1511 Please see Color Key at bottom of sheet for limits on answers

Answer Question Comments

38 N/A The State Health Benefits Program (SHBP) offers medical, prescription and dental coverage options for more than 850,000 participants, including employees, dependents and retirees. All plans have substantial networks of healthcare providers, and provide services nationwide. 62% of municipalities, and 33% of counties, within New Jersey participate in SHBP. If your municipality has non-SHBP coverage, as your collective bargaining agreements come up for renegotiation, do your municipality's negotiation proposals seek contract provisions allowing its employees to be switched to SHBP or another non-SHBP plan of lesser cost?

39 Prospective Prior to municipal officers and employees being required to substantially share in the cost of their health benefits, there was no disincentive to officers and employees accepting coverage even though they had alternative coverage. Many municipalities would offer payments in lieu of health benefits to encourage officers and employees to voluntarily drop coverage, provided they had coverage from another source. The policy often saved money by replacing the expensive cost of providing health care with the less expensive payment in lieu of health benefits. The need to pay officers and employees money to not take a health insurance benefit they can receive from another source has largely disappeared, because the cost of premium sharing will cause officers and employees to drop coverage if alternative coverage is available. Has your municipality: (1) explored all necessary actions to end payments in lieu of health benefits (e.g. modifying collective bargaining agreements); and (2) either adopted or discussed at a public meeting a policy prohibiting payments in lieu of health benefits to officers and employees who are not contractually entitled to such payments? An answer of “N/A” is only applicable where there are no instances in the municipality of payments in lieu of health benefits.