The Brown County Council approved giving Auditor Julia Reeves the authority to transfer up to $650,000 from the rainy day fund to the health trust fund to help cover medical bills Sept. 16.

Commissioner Diana Biddle said the county was still waiting on some reinsurance payments to clear. The county covers up to $60,000 in medical bills before reinsurance kicks in to reimburse anything above that. “If I don’t have to use this, I will not use this, but I just need to have the approval to use it if I need to,” Reeves said.

Biddle said there about five health insurance claims that have “cascaded onto one another.” She said they would not know if they will get reimbursed for their claims until a month or so.

If the full $650,000 is needed, that would drop the county’s rainy day fund balance to $650,000. Its balance was $1.3 million as of July 1. The rainy day fund is like a savings account for the county.

“For our reinsurance, if we don’t pay those bills timely, then our reinsurance can deny the reimbursement, so they have to be paid as they come in,” Biddle said.

Councilman Darren Byrd asked about the risk of reinsurance limits rising next year. Biddle said estimates would not be available until the end of October because 10 months of actual billing are needed before a bid can be given. “It’s not looking good,” Reeves said.

Any money received through reinsurance must then be deposited into the health trust fund and cannot be used to reimburse the rainy day fund.

At the Sept. 18 commissioners meeting, resident Tim Clark asked if the commissioners had looked at the Brown County Schools’ health insurance plan. The school district’s self-insurance fund increased from a positive balance of $522,645 at the end of 2017 to $1,271,117 at the end of 2018. Previously, that account had been $700,000 in the negative. Part of that improvement was attributed to R.E. Sutton & Associates, the district’s health insurance benefit adviser, which came on board after Laura Hammack took over as superintendent to help change the district’s self-insurance plan. The change included providing a health clinic in Brown County that is free to all school employees through their insurance plans.

Last fall, the commissioners voted to provide clinic memberships to county employees as part of their benefits package.

Biddle said Sept. 18 that the county will be looking at other alternatives for reinsurance, which costs the county the most.

“I’m all for looking at what the school is doing. If she has something better, then I want to get in on it,” commissioner Jerry Pittman said.