The Brownsville Independent School District is seeking competitive proposals for group health insurance – Specifications will be posted soon on: http://www.bisd.us/PURCHASING/bids_for_vendors.htm
The BISD is also reviewing proposals received for a fee based insurance consultant to assist the district in reviewing the various insurance programs the district sponsors.
Many carriers have “Red Lined” the BISD so it will be very interesting to see just how many vendors will participate in this process. We predict a feeding frenzy amongst insurance agents – they will be forming alliances and jockeying for political positions as history has shown. Duplicate bids from carriers will exaserbate the process as was the case many years ago when Prudential issued 13 duplicate bids through 13 differerent agents for BISD. Recently, for example, a major carrier issued as many as 9 duplicate proposals for the Mission Independent School District.
A strong marketing push to tout PPO discounts by vendors will prove to be the single most important issue upon which the ultimately successful bid will be awarded. However, with a Board of Trustees completely ignorant of how PPO networks really work, the final decision on who has the best medical care pricing will likely be based on analysis performed using methodologies that we know have been used in the past that are flawed and totally inaccurate.
As a taxpayer in Brownsville, Texas, we are going to watch this play out very carefully. The BISD health insurance budget is significant and has a direct impact on local school taxes. From this vantage, we see many areas that should be addressed and significant savings realized. However, we are fearful that there will be missed opportunities to achieve this.