Mayor John Vieau (left) and Marc Criscitelli (right) from HUB International discuss and present health insurance rates in Chicopee.
Photo credit: ChicopeeTV
CHICOPEE — The City Council hosted a special meeting on July 29 to discuss the city health insurance review, selection, rates and offerings in front of filled City Hall auditorium.
City Council President Frank Laflamme said he wanted to host this meeting to assist the City Council in being informed if any constituents had questions. He stated the City Council is not involved in the process.
Before the meeting took place, city union workers and UFCW Local 1459 protested outside of City Hall for affordable health insurance with the rising premiums.
At the beginning of the meeting, Mayor John Vieau stated he was excited for the presentation because “there are a lot of inaccuracies that are out there about health insurance here in the city of Chicopee.”
Russell Denver, Kathy Breton and Marc Criscitelli from HUB International joined Vieau to give a presentation on the rates.
Vieau said, “I’m very grateful for this team from HUB International for not only their expertise and guidance, but really trying to make sure our health insurance premiums remain affordable. I’ll say that because there’s some talk about how the burden has been put on employees. The burden has been on everyone.”
The largest budget driver in Chicopee’s approved fiscal year 2026 budget comes from the Human Resources budget with an increase of approximately $3.4 million, primarily due to rising health insurance costs.
Criscitelli said approximately seven years ago, HUB International moved away from a fully insured plan, where you paid premiums and the carriers paid claims to a partial self-insuring concept where HUB International implemented a deductible.
The city and health plan trust partially self-insures the deductible. This moved the plan from a $500 deductible to a $2,000 deductible.
Criscitelli explained that the employees paid the first $500 and the city paid the rest.
The year after that, they increased the deductible to $3,000. A couple of years after that, the deductible was increased to $4,000 and then finally it was increased to $5,000.
“The insurance carriers and the market place didn’t have a higher deductible to go to,” Criscitelli stated.
As of today, Chicopee’s health plan trust has accumulated approximately $2.5 million. The trust balance is owned by the city and health plan participants.
Criscitelli also explained that to his knowledge, Chicopee is also the only municipality in the state to offer Diversified Group Brokerage or DGB/ClaimDoc, which enables the city to offer a plan with a 0% increase compared to FY24 rates.
“Chicopee is a pioneer to do this, to jump into a new plan offering like this. They certainly did not want to take away the old plans so they continue to offer those and just offered this one as a new plan, as a new offering,” he said.
When the plan was originally rolled out in FY25, approximately 113 employees were enrolled in the plan. Enrollment increased by about 66% in FY26, which is 197 news employees covered by the plan and a total of 390 members.
Criscitelli said Chicopee is unique because they are almost full self-insured so a majority or 90% of residents’ costs are being paid directly to doctors, hospitals and pharmacies.
Criscitelli also highlighted struggles in the health insurance industry, including multiple companies declaring losses in the hundreds of millions.
“Many other municipalities have not fared as well as the city of Chicopee. I think some people might have seen in the news the GIC had lost $240 million so they ran out of funds for their health plan in May,” he stated.
There are different contributing reasons for the increased healthcare costs and utilization including aging population, increased chronic disease prevalence, rising prescription drug prices, increased health care service costs and “COVID hangover,” care ignored for other issues during and after the coronavirus pandemic, has exacerbated some medical conditions.
On average, the city of Chicopee’s most enrolled plan has lower rates than 90% of the most enrolled plans for other municipalities and lower than the Group Insurance Commission.
“The health plan challenges are not unique to Chicopee. Many other municipalities have been dealing with this and companies in the for-profit industry, insurance companies and certainly the hospital and health care system,” Criscitelli said.
