Ochsner Pressures Employee Spouses To Get COVID-19 Vaccines Or Health Costs May Rise

John Tuttle October 4, 2021 Healthcare costs Leave a comment 2 Views

BATON ROUGE, Louisiana (WAFB) – Ochsner Health, Louisiana’s largest nonprofit healthcare system, has announced a significant change to its upcoming 2022 health benefit enrollment plans that could add fees for employees whose spouses or domestic partners are on system health insurance but are not vaccinated against COVID-19.

Ochsner issued the following statement on this matter:

Each year, Ochsner Health evaluates health insurance and other benefits based on feedback from our employees and changes that impact benefits, services and costs. Our competitive benefit plans are one of the many offerings that make Ochsner a top employer in the Southern Gulf.

One of the changes to the health care benefit offering coming to 2022 is a cost adjustment for adult dependents (spouses and domestic partners) who are not vaccinated against COVID-19. This tariff is similar to what has been put in place for tobacco users and is in line with the benefits offered by many healthcare organizations and companies. This is not a mandate, as self-employed spouses and domestic partners can choose to select a health plan outside of Ochsner Health’s offerings. As with our employee vaccination policy, spouses and domestic partners with medical and religious objections will be able to file exemption requests.

As a self-insured organization, we work hard every year to keep our health insurance premiums low for our employees and their families. The reality is that the cost of treating COVID-19, especially for patients requiring intensive hospital care, is expensive, and we have spent over $ 9 million on COVID care for those covered by our health plans. over the past year. We know that COVID-19 vaccination dramatically reduces transmission, symptom severity, hospitalizations and deaths. About 90% of people hospitalized for COVID in our facilities have not been vaccinated since the vaccines were approved in December 2020.

Widespread vaccination is essential to stop the spread of COVID-19, and we hope this change will encourage even more community members to get vaccinated. We encourage employees who have questions about benefits to send their questions directly to the Ochsner HR Solutions Center.

RELATED: Ochsner Health requires all employees to be vaccinated against COVID-19

Ochsner Health announced in August that it was requiring all its employees to be vaccinated against COVID-19 by October 29. Health system officials said they are implementing the requirement for all doctors, providers and employees.

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