YOUNGSTOWN — City council is expected today to move ahead with plans to go to a self-insured health care policy.

The city has used the services of Anthem BlueCross BlueShield for its health insurance, but decided to self-insure, starting Feb. 1, with the expectation that it will save money, said Kyle Miasek, interim finance director.

None of the six council members at Tuesday’s finance committee objected to the ordinance and the committee recommended its passage at tonight’s full council meeting.

There are about 650 city workers who get health insurance from the city, Miasek said. The city pays 90 percent of the premiums while employees pay 10 percent.

Youngstown is among the last of the area’s larger government entities to change to a self-insurance policy, he said.

The amount of the savings won’t be known until the yearly contract is up, Miasek said.

United Healthcare will serve as the city’s insurance third-party administrator if council approves the contract and it’s finalized by the board of control.

United is charging the city $143,676 in an administrator’s fee, but agreed to give a $100,000 rebate back to the city by the end of the year, Miasek said.

Also, by being self-insured, the city will no longer be required to pay a 1.4 percent state insurance premium tax, he said. The city pays about $10 million annually in premiums so the savings will be about $140,000, Miasek said.

It won’t pay the markup costs of having an insurance company handle the insurance plan, he said

The city will also get the rebates for prescription drug coverage, he said.

He told the finance committee Tuesday that the city pays about $1.6 million a year on seven different drugs for its employees. Anthem was getting rebates from drug companies for those expensive medicines that will now go to the city, Miasek said. He didn’t have the amounts of the rebates.

The contract with United would also have a limit of 115 percent of the premium costs as the city is paying catastrophic loss prevention, he said.

“We’re putting protections in place,” Miasek said. “If we have catastrophic claims and they exceed the 115 percent, we’ve bought protection to put a ceiling on it.”

Councilwoman Samantha Turner, D-3rd Ward, asked if the United coverage would be comparable to Anthem.

Miasek responded: “It mirrors our current coverage” though there might be a few doctors not on the United plan that are on Anthem.

In February 2020, the city went to a self-insure policy for dental and vision coverage.

The city saved about $60,000 through the change, Miasek said, but part of that is because dental visits decreased in the past year because of the COVID-19 pandemic.