Health insurance carrier Aetna Global has agreed to postpone the renewal date of its contract by two months while it waits for the Fitial administration to decide on its proposal to raise premium rates under a new contract.<\/p>\n
Retirement Fund administrator Richard Villagomez said yesterday that the postponement means that coverage and premiums for all retirees and members will remain intact.<\/p>\n
Aetna\u2019s contract, renewed every year, was up for renewal on Tuesday, Nov. 1. <\/p>\n
At a recent Fund board meeting, Villagomez said that the Fitial administration has yet to decide on the company\u2019s new proposed premium rates.<\/p>\n
The insurance carrier had presented the government two options, both of which would increase the amount of premiums that will be paid by members. The specifics of these options were not made public.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhile we sort this out, Aetna has agreed to postpone the implementation date of the renewal terms from Nov. 1, 2011, to Jan. 1, 2012. Coverage and premiums will remain intact and the same until Jan. 1, 2012,\u201d Villagomez said in an email yesterday, adding that he cannot divulge specifics of the proposal until the administration selects a renewal option.<\/p>\n
According to Villagomez, most members have reported being \u201cvery satisfied\u201d with the health insurance coverage provided by Aetna. <\/p>\n
The Group Health and Life Insurance Program, or GHLIP, is a government program and is only administered by the Fund. Any final decision on the contract with Aetna lies with the Executive Branch.<\/p>\n
Villagomez also disclosed that the applicability of the federal Health Care Reform Act to the CNMI plan is being re-assessed at the request of some lawmakers and the Fitial administration. \u201cIf applicable, the coverage mandated by the Act is nice but is not free. It will increase premiums that we all have to pay for\u2014active employees, retirees, and the CNMI government,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Since the Fund pays 50 percent of premium contributions for GHLI, board chair Sixto Igisomar said that the options presented by Aetna would also mean a substantially increased burden for the Fund. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Health insurance carrier Aetna Global has agreed to postpone the renewal date of its contract by two months while it waits for the Fitial administration to decide on its proposal to raise premium rates under a new contract.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-156353","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156353","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=156353"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156353\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=156353"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=156353"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=156353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}