State appoints new director of employee health plan

Thursday, Sept. 23, 1999 | 9:54 a.m.

Jan Marie Reed, an executive with UICI Administrators, was selected Wednesday by the Nevada Committee on Benefits on a 5-3 vote. The job pays $90,000 a year.

Members of the benefits committee, all newly appointed by Gov. Kenny Guinn as part of his reorganization of the state health plan, were split among three candidates.

The other candidates were Randy Waterman, acting risk manager for the state and the person managing the plan for the past several months, and Phil Nowak, administrative services officer for the Medical Division of the Department of Prisons.

Reed now works for UICI, which took over the plan's bill-paying duties after the previous third-party administrator, L&H Administrators, unexpectedly went out of business in mid-1997, leaving the state plan in serious trouble. Bills were not paid and eventually backed up to more than 100,000 unprocessed claims.

UICI was hired to catch up the backlog and eventually hired to continue paying the plan's bills, which are being processed again in a timely manner.

The Committee on Benefits also voted to eliminate most of the huge deductible that was imposed in January on retirees who are under the state health plan.

But retirees won't get back the no-deductible version of the plan they had in the past. Instead, they'll have to pay about what active state workers must pay before benefits kick in.

The so-called "carve out" adopted by the old benefits committee last fall surprised many retirees who found that they now had to pay the entire Medicare $3,000 deductible plus the state's $350 a year deductible.

In the past, Medicare paid 80 percent of their bills and the state picked up the rest.

Retirees complained that the change was bankrupting them with medical bills. The move was one of several designed to restore the plan's financial health.

Under the latest plan, Medicare pays the first 80 percent and the state pays 80 percent of what's left. That way, retirees may pay more than active state workers but far less than $3,350 every year.