Van Buren Township Trustee Vicki Payne approached the Brown County Commissioners and council about losing her health insurance — something she didn’t know had happened until her husband visited a doctor.
Payne first approached the council in June. She went to the July 3 commissioners meeting to further discuss the issue.
“My husband got a call from the doctor he had just seen. He said, ‘Sir you don’t have any insurance. You gave us wrong information,'” she said.
After calling SIHO insurance services, Payne was informed her health insurance was cancelled on May 3. Payne, one of the county’s longest-serving township trustees, said she was under the impression that she was grandfathered into the county’s health insurance plan.
Commissioner Diana Biddle said the personnel policy approved last year included a clause that township trustees would no longer be eligible for county group insurance coverage as of Jan. 1 this year.
Payne said she never received anything in writing that she was losing her health insurance.
“I think as trustee I have sacrificed a lot in the last two years,” she said, referring to the lawsuit she and her board were involved in with the Van Buren Volunteer Fire Department and the board’s quest to create Southern Brown Volunteer Fire Department. “I feel like $217 a month is sort of squat to what we’ve been through. It was very hurtful. I went without salary, rent. My workers did. The board did and everything to keep Van Buren rolling, to get the fire station, which they helped us and we got,” Payne said.
“Then, ‘You’re not worthy of insurance,’ and why I wasn’t notified? There’s penalties, because I’m 70, to get signed up with Medicare now if you went uninsured. They put us back on, but still, why no letter?”
In June, Biddle said she had recently become aware of the issue. She said township trustees will no longer receive group health insurance coverage because they are not county employees; they are township employees.
“They have a different pot of money than county employees. They were put on the county insurance and then they were taken off after the election in 2018. All the other trustees have their own insurance. The only one remained on there was Vicki,” she said.
“You would think she would have been notified anyways,” said council member Glenda Stogsdill-Johnson.
Biddle said she did not know why Payne was not notified.
At the July commissioners meeting, county Human Resources Coordinator Melissa Stinson said that when the council wanted trustees to start paying township money toward life insurance and into the county’s health trust fund, the other trustees did not want to do that. She said the decision was made to not make trustees eligible for group health insurance coverage after the last election.
An asterisk that leads to information on another page in the personnel handbook indicated that trustees would lose their eligibility on Jan. 1 this year.
“We did not change our summary plan document that went to the insurance company, which said you guys were grandfathered in. We have an ordinance that says you’re not, then we have a summary plan that says you are, so there was a dilemma, of course,” Stinson said.
Stinson said she would help Payne fill out claim forms to take care of those bills not covered in May.
Payne will have insurance through Jan. 1 of next year, allowing her to apply for Medicare during open enrollment in October without being penalized.
