History: Health Insurance Costs for NYC Employees and Retirees for FY-2023 and FY-2014

Based on reports from the NYC Office of Labor Relations, NYC spent the following amounts on helath insurance for FY-2023 and FY-2014.

The amounts do not include payment for the Housing Authority (HA) or the Health and Hospitals Corp. (HHC).
It also does not include payments to retirees for refunds of Part B premiums that the retirees pay to Medicare every month (est. $415M from City funds for FY-2023).

Health Insurance Costs

Group	FY-2023		FY-2014
Employees	$5.580B		$3.009B
Non-Medicare Retirees	$1.619B		$0.787B
Medicare Retirees	$0.452B		$0.357B
Total	$7.651B		$4.152B

It is clear that the City's costs for health insurance are rising. But what the City doesn't make clear is that it is the costs for employees and non-Medicare retirees that have gone up significantly. While the costs for Medicare retirees has increased $100M over ten years, the number of Medicare retirees increased by 22,400.

Average annual cost per contract:

• Employees
  • 2014 -- $10,862
  • 2023 -- $21,107
• Non-Medicare Retirees
  • 2014 -- $13,271
  • 2023 -- $25,571
• Medicare Retirees
  • 2014 -- $2,550
  • 2023 -- $2,840

Number of Contracts including HHC and HA

Group	FY-2023		FY-2014
Employees	325,434		335,381
Non-Medicare Retirees	76,376		71,434
Medicare Retirees	191,536		168,657
Total	593,346		575,472

Emblemhealth

In 2005, GHI and HIP merged to form Emblemhealth. In FY-2023, the City paid 96% of its health insurance costs to Embelemhealth ($7,488 out of $7,651).

Average annual cost for GHI anf HIP per contract including HHC and HA:

• Employees
  • GHI
    • 2014 -- $10,949
    • 2023 -- $22,616
  • HIP
    • 2014 -- $10,517
    • 2023 -- $17,913
• Non-Medicare Retirees
  • GHI
    • 2014 -- $13,080
    • 2023 -- $26,546
  • HIP
    • 2014 -- $14,140
    • 2023 -- $20,266
• Medicare Retirees
  • GHI
    • 2014 -- $2,599
    • 2023 -- $3,277
  • HIP
    • 2014 -- $2,318
    • 2023 -- $129

The $129 amount is not a typo. In 2022, Emblemhealth changed the monthly amount per contract for the HIP Mediacre Advantage coverge to $7.50. Why? I suspect that it was because of competitive pressure.