Monessen forced to change health insurance
By KRISTIE LINDEN
klinden@yourmvi.com
Monessen’s council meeting Monday revealed the city was dropped by its health insurance provider, three union employees filed grievances and an accusation from October resurfaced that someone intentionally tried to bankrupt the city.
This month, Benecon-Pennsylvania Municipal Health Insurance Cooperative informed the city it would cancel coverage effective Dec. 31 for nonpayment of bills.
At Monday’s meeting, Mayor Matt Shorraw asked city Administrator John Harhai to give some background on the issue. Harhai asked Councilman Don Gregor to explain it.
“The cancellation is a done deal,” Gregor said. “They canceled us for nonpayment. We couldn’t get caught up this year, so they canceled us.”
Councilman Tony Orzechowski said he was told the insurance was canceled because payment hasn’t been made for the last four months.
Harhai said it wasn’t four straight months, but was off and on all year.
Harhai first said the city paid all 12 months this year, but there are still two months owed from last year. He later said the city still owes one month of this year, for a total of three months’ bills that are owed to the insurance carrier.
Orzechowski said he was told that in a meeting with employees that Harhai informed them the bill hadn’t been paid in four months. Harhai claims he didn’t say that.
The city carried over debts from the health insurance, pension and sanitation bills from 2019 with the expectation that a tax anticipation note would pay off the majority of it. The city did not qualify for a TAN note in 2020.
“You told us you had arrangements with those people to make payments,” Orzechowski said.
Over the course of this year, the city has paid off the pension debt, but Harhai has said in meetings over the last couple of months that he made arrangements with the other two organizations and they agreed to permit the city to continue paying off that debt over the next two years.
“That’s what they said, but we just owed them too much,” Harhai said.
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