CHARLESTON, W.Va. — A group of PEIA Task Force members is starting to look at the insurance plan itself — what’s covered, what ought to be covered and what, if anything, should be scaled back.
The coverage and plan subcommittee, which met Wednesday afternoon, started trying to wrap its arms around the Public Employees Insurance Agency.
Those who gathered at the state Capitol discussed issues like how to encourage people to develop healthier lifestyles to push insurance costs down without making people feel penalized.
They also talked about what coverage should be available across West Virginia’s borders, with the director of PEIA saying his philosophy is to keep coverage in state whenever possible.
And they talked about economic issues such as reimbursement rates for providers, with the director of the West Virginia Hospital Association saying hospitals probably can’t absorb another rate reduction.
These are hard, complicated decisions that the full task force will probably have to issue recommendations about sometime over the next few months.
The subcommittee asked for more information about how PEIA currently works.
Rob Alsop, a West Virginia University vice president who led Wednesday’s meeting, said the task force will need to take what it hears from the public and run it past PEIA to start thinking about adjustments.
It also is asking for more information about what public insurance plans in other states cover — “not trying to reinvent the wheel but trying to understand: ‘Are there things from a plan design that we haven’t thought of?'”
So, much more number crunching and assessment is ahead, Alsop said.
“The goal of the subcommittee is to take the public comments we hear, as well as input from PEIA, to take a look at what our plan does and doesn’t do compared to other plans,” Alsop said, “and based on what we’ve heard from the public comment hearings, work to make some recommendations to the overall task force.”
The PEIA Task Force has been having a series of public meetings across the state.
There are meetings Thursday night in Beckley, Lewisburg and Princeton. Those meetings are also video streamed and archived.
More information about what the task force is doing is available at peiataskforce.wv.gov.