LACERS Response to City Council Motion on Healthcare Costs

On March 3, 2021, the Los Angeles City Council approved Council Motion 20-1606 to have the City Administrative Officer, in consultation with LACERS, Los Angeles Fire and Police Pensions, and the City’s Personnel Department, along with labor, report to the Executive Employee Relations Committee and appropriate City Council Committees, viable options to reduce health care costs, yet still offer affordable high-quality healthcare.

We would like to reassure our Members that LACERS already does an exceptional job at managing healthcare costs and is able to tailor its health plan offerings to the unique concerns of our retired membership more so than the individual market or healthcare exchanges that are otherwise available. The following are a few, summarized examples, taken from the official report that was submitted to City Council, that illustrate how LACERS is able to provide robust healthcare at reasonable costs:

• LACERS can leverage its subscriber population and relationship with the health plan carriers to manage costs and plan design. 
• LACERS offers support to Members who are enrolling in a plan, have service or claims issues with their plan, or require expedited service due to urgent situations. 
• LACERS administers Requests for Proposals as needed to keep its plans competitive with the market and always considers Member disruption in its decision-making. 
• LACERS regularly reviews utilization and chronic condition data which helps guide plan design strategies to help reduce long-term costs. 
• LACERS plans are available to Members wherever they live, whereas healthcare exchanges are not available in every state.  
• LACERS enforces the Los Angeles Administrative Code’s Medicare requirement to ensure Members enroll and maintain their enrollment in Medicare, which decreases costs to LACERS and the City, and protects the Member’s health by ensuring their coverage remains intact. If Members were enrolled in outside plans, LACERS would not be able to administer this program as efficiently and costs would likely increase.  

We invite you to view the entire response to the City Council motion, which was presented to the LACERS Board on April 27, 2021, here.