Berlin, Coos County schools scramble to find insurance coverage

Local municipalities and Coos County are scrambling to find health insurance options for their employees in light of the dispute over Senate Bill 297. Two of the three pooled risk management programs that provide health insurance coverage to government entities have announced plans to exit the market as a result of the proposed legislation.

Health Trust, New Hampshire Interlocal Trust and SchoolCare are pooled risk management programs in the state that provide health insurance to municipalities, school districts and counties. A fourth program, Primex, deals with property and liability insurance.

NHIT has announced it will dissolve on June 30 and Health Trust said if SB 297 becomes law, it will end all coverage by June 30, 2026. The bill has passed the Senate and is currently before the House.

The impact of the dispute over the legislation, sponsored by Senate President Sharon Carson (R-Londonderry), will especially be felt by communities that are not big enough to self-insure like the cities of Manchester and Nashua. The pooled risk management programs were authorized by the state to allow small municipalities and school districts to collectively self-insure to access cheaper rates.

Even before NHIT announced it will cease coverage on June 30, several local entities were hit with rate increases as high as 65 percent from the program, forcing them to immediately issue requests for proposals.

The town of Gorham and SAU 20, which includes Gorham, Milan and Errol school districts, received a rate increase of 65 percent.

SAU 20 Business Administrator Cassandra Micucci said last fall they had been guaranteed a rate increase not to exceed 13.5 percent. So school officials were shocked to be told in late March that the rate increase was 65 percent. Gorham Town Manager Peter Gagnon said the rate increase would have cost $170,000 just for the town employees for the period from July 1, 2025, to June 30, 2026. He said the town and school district are looking at options together and also communicating with the county and other communities.

In the case of Coos County, Human Resources Coordinator Morgan DeBlois said the county had received a contracted rate increase not to exceed 8.5 percent last fall. Their rate from NHIT turned out to be 40 percent. At its April meeting, the commission said that rate increase would have resulted in a $1.7 million increase, with $855,000 falling in the 2025 budget.

Even if NHIT continues to operate, DeBlois said the 40 percent increase is not something the county can accept. The increase would also impact employees who pay a percentage of their health insurance costs. Depending on the plan, employees would see a $70 to $341 per month increase in their insurance costs.

“We would never be able to sustain a 40 percent increase for the county or our employees. It would just never, it would never happen,” she said.

DeBlois said the county is aggressively looking for new coverage.

“We have some options on the table,” she said.

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Berlin City Manager Phillip Warren Jr., said approximately 80 percent of city employees are on NHIT and they were quoted a rate not to exceed 10 percent and their actual quote came within that rate. But because NHIT has notified the city that it is dissolving on June 30, he said the city is also looking at options.

Berlin Superintendent of Schools Julie King said the supervisory unit uses Health Trust and was given a rate not to exceed 14.6 percent, which the program confirmed.

“With the legislation on the table and the worry that Health Trust will dissolve if it passes, we are looking around. However, there are not many options that we are aware of. Of the three options available to us in the past (InterLocal Trust, SchoolCare and Health Trust), Health Trust is the only one that would even give us a rate last year,” King said.

In testimony on the bill before the House on April 23, Coos County Commissioner Raymond Gorman noted the county received the new rate increase just days after the county delegation had approved the 2025 county budget.

Gorman said the increases also came after local communities had approved town and school budgets for the year without factoring in the new rates. Given the tough economy in the North Country, he stressed that budgets are tight.

The pooled risk management programs operate under the supervision of the Secretary of State’s Bureau of Securities.

Secretary of State David Scanlan said the legislation is needed because of concerns about the stability of some of the pooled risk management programs and to address financial deficiencies.

But in a statement released last week, Health Trust called the rational for SB 297 extremely troubling and spoke against rushing “through harmful legislation that would negatively and unnecessarily impact New Hampshire's public sector cities, towns, schools, counties and others we serve.”

Gagnon said while SB 297 seems to be the catalyst for the rate increases, many are saying there is more at issue.

“Medical costs are going up, claims are going up and the back-up funds needed to cover any spikes in medical costs have increased geometrically,” he noted.

The result, Gagnon said, is that school district and municipalities all over the state are seeing health insurance rates go up.