Submitted for: Cheryl A. Freer, Director of Benefits
Health Plan Benefits are an important part of the compensation package that you receive as an employee of Ithaca College.
Like many other higher education institutions, we face continually rising health care costs, and must find ways to address those costs in order to continue to offer health plan benefits that meet your needs and are affordable to both you and to Ithaca College. We have worked closely with the Faculty and Staff Benefits Committee on an ongoing basis and are excited about the plan designs that the committee has endorsed and recommended the College offer to eligible employees effective January 1, 2007. We believe the plan options will meet both our benefit and cost needs.
One way to obtain better rates is to have multiple plan offerings administered by a single insurance company. The College engaged Mercer Health and Benefits, a nationally respected consulting firm, to conduct a thorough review and recommend which insurance carrier would be best suited to administer our medical plans. The overwhelming result was Aetna. We feel confident that the Aetna of today is very different from the Aetna of several years ago when they were moving through the acquisition of another carrier. Thus, effective January 1, 2007, HealthNow will no longer administer any of the College’s medical plans.
We are optimistic that the plan choices being offered at the start of the new year will continue to provide valuable health plan benefits at an affordable cost for both you and for Ithaca College. The following two plan options will be offered for 2007:
• Aetna Open Access Plan, providing benefits similar to the benefits offered by the current Aetna Open Access Plan, with in and out of network benefits payable for services received anywhere in the country, and
• Aetna High Deductible Health Plan with a Health Savings Account. This is a new plan (you may have heard about these plans in the news) that can help you manage your health care and save for future health care expenses. Because this is a new plan, you will be receiving plan details before and during annual enrollment.
As an Aetna member in either plan, you will have online resources through your account on the Aetna Navigator website, including valuable health and benefits information, a plan comparison tool to estimate your costs under both plan choices, a way to order member ID cards, check eligibility or claim status, find in-network doctors, hospitals and other health care professionals…and more.
We would also like to take this opportunity to thank the members of the Faculty and Staff Benefits Committee for their dedication and hard work over the past couple of years as they worked with us on your behalf to identify and evaluate medical plan options.
Please be on the watch for more information that will help you choose the plan to best fit your needs as we prepare for implementing these plans over the next several months!
https://www.ithaca.edu/intercom/article.php/2006072412554018