Untitled Document

Two-month holiday granted for insurance premiums

Good News! During the last Legislative session, the Department of Administration was directed to provide a two month premium holiday for employees and agencies as was done last year. The premium holidays will impact employee pay checks on the following dates in November (for December coverage) and December (for January coverage):

November 10 and 25
December 9 and 23

On those pay dates, no medical/dental premium will be withheld from your pay check. Office of Group Insurance will pay both the employee and agency premiums utilizing the balance of the excess reserves in the Group Insurance account.

For those employees on the Controller's Office biweekly payroll system, medical/dental deductions will be stopped. A list of the covered employees and premium due will be sent to Office of Group Insurance to allow us to pay the appropriate premium to Blue Cross.

Agencies that have their own payroll systems will stop the deductions for their employees and the agency paid contributions. Those agencies will also provide a deduction register to allow Office of Group Insurance to remit premium on your behalf.
We have been fortunate to have funding available to provide the two month premium holiday both last year and this year.

However, it is important for all of us to recognize that these holidays are being provided with one time excess monies that will not be available in future.

Note: Although employees will not need to pay premiums in November or December, they will still need to work their required number of hours to maintain their health insurance benefits. That means that all employees are required to have at least 20 hours paid in each week in order to keep their health insurance eligibility, with the exception to Family Medical Leave and the State Disability program. Part-time and temporary employees are required to maintain their normal work schedules to avoid dropping into higher premium Tier levels for the following quarter.