In a 7-1 vote, a state board on Tuesday approved increases in the health insurance rates for some public school employees and reduced rates and benefits for others.

With some minor adjustments, the rates and benefits approved by the State and Public School Life and Health Insurance Board followed the recommendations made a day earlier by the board's benefits subcommittee.

Teachers and other school employees in the most expensive plan, the gold plan, will pay lower rates in exchange for reduced benefits under a new plan, the premium plan, starting Jan. 1 unless they choose a different option.

Those who are now in the cheapest plan, the bronze plan, will pay more under its replacement, the classic plan, unless they choose a different option.

The only member to vote against the recommended rates was Bob Boyd, an internal employee benefits consultant to Windstream Communications in Little Rock.

He favored a more conservative option that included even lower rates for the premium plan and higher ones for the classic plan.

"I'm not a big believer in kicking the can down the road," he said.

In a news release, the Arkansas Education Association, the state's largest teachers union, said its members are "breathing a slight sigh of relief, for now."

"Though concerns still exist regarding the long-term solvency of the Program, AEA is satisfied that monthly employee premiums will be similar to 2014 premium rates," the union said in the release.

The union said stabilizing the plans in the long term will require more taxpayer funding.

The approval of the rates and benefits for 2015 came after changes mandated during a special session of the Legislature this month aimed at preventing an overall increase of 35 percent in premiums for the 46,000 school employees covered by the plans.

The legislative action drops part-time public school employees from the plans starting Jan. 1, as well as employees' spouses who can get coverage from their own employers.

The laws also limit coverage of weight loss surgeries and will eventually transfer money from school districts' payroll-tax savings to prop up the plans.

Under the plan options approved by the board on Tuesday, the 18,300 teachers and other public school employees now in the gold plan and the 5,000 employees in the silver plan will be moved into the new premium plan on Jan. 1 unless they make a different choice during open enrollment in November.

Those in the gold plan will pay less per month in the new premium plan while those in the silver plan will pay slightly more if they stay in the premium plan.

Like the current silver plan, the premium plan will have a deductible of $1,000 for individual coverage or $2,000 for family coverage. The gold plan does not have a deductible.

The deductible for the premium plan will not apply to benefits that are subject to co-payments, and those co-payments will be lower under the premium plan than under the gold and silver plans.

The co-payment for a primary-care doctor's office visit will fall from $35 to $25, and the co-payment for a specialist visit will drop from $70 to $50.

School employees will pay up to $179.38 a month for individual coverage or $814.92 for family coverage.

Those covered now by the gold plan pay a maximum $249.38 a month for individual coverage or $1,132.96 for family coverage.

Those in the silver plan pay up to $173.32 for individual coverage or $787.36 for family coverage.

The monthly rates for the premium plan recommended by the benefits subcommittee on Monday were slightly higher -- by about $6 for individual coverage and $27 for family coverage -- before being updated by the board's actuarial consultant, the Cheiron financial and actuarial consulting firm.

The rates for the bronze plan, which will be renamed the classic plan, will go up.

School employees will pay up to $45 a month for individual coverage under the classic plan compared with $11 under the bronze plan and $350.36 a month for family coverage compared with $269.50 under the current bronze plan.

The deductible will remain the same: $2,000 for an individual or $3,000 for family coverage.

School employees also would have a new plan option, the basic plan.

The rates for the basic plan would be the same as those for the current bronze plan, but it would have a higher deductible: $4,250 for individual coverage or $8,500 for a family.

The benefits subcommittee on Monday recommended basic plan deductibles of $4,000 for individual coverage, or $8,000 for family coverage, but subcommittee member Jeff Altemus said Tuesday that members didn't realize that option also would have required members to pay 30 percent of the cost of the medical expenses after meeting the deductible.

Under the plan options approved Tuesday, members in the classic and basic will pay 20 percent of the cost of their medical expenses after meeting their deductibles, as they do now in the bronze plan.

About 23,200 employees are in the bronze plan.

Bob Alexander, director of the Department of Finance and Administration's Employee Benefits Division, has said that increasing the rates for the bronze plan was necessary to cover health care costs for those enrolled.

As premiums for the gold plan have increased in recent years, more employees with expensive health conditions have switched to the bronze plan, he said. That has left both the gold and bronze plans covering employees with higher medical bills, resulting in a greater need for higher rates or reduced benefits.

Even under the rates approved by the board on Tuesday, Cheiron estimated that an additional 8,000 members now enrolled in the gold or silver plans will switch to the classic or basic plan.

By lowering the rates for the premium plan more, and increasing the rates for the classic and basic plans, the "risk adjusted" option favored by Boyd was designed to discourage such movement.

But Altemus said he didn't think 8,000 people will move into the basic and classic plans next year.

"I think the ones who are willing to make that migration have already made that migration," he said.

In a 5-3 vote, the board also rejected adding a $5-per-adult surcharge to the rates to increase the plans' reserves for large claims to the $11 million recommended by Cheiron. The plans are expected to end this year with a reserve of $8 million.

The rates paid by school employees vary by district, because some districts contribute more than the $150 a month per enrolled employee mandated by state law. The minimum contribution will increase next year to $153 per enrolled employee.

The state's contribution will fall from a total of $93 million this year to $86.6 million.

Sen. Jim Hendren, R-Sulphur Springs, said the rates adopted by the board will help improve the plans' finances.

A legislative task force, of which Hendren is chairman, is also exploring future changes, including combining the plans for teachers with the plans for state employees, letting school districts form their own plans and providing incentives for healthy behavior.

"What we have done is bought ourselves a year now where we can look at how can we make this program even more efficient," he said.

A Section on 07/30/2014