New Drug Plan Option for Franklin County

Employees with Franklin County will have a new drug plan option added to their health insurance plans.

At a called meeting last week, county manager Billy Morse said the board of commissioners voted to approve a prescription drug plan.

Last month, the board approved a new health insurance plan for employees but the county is only paying for the employee, not their families – that must come out of the employee’s pocket.

During discussions last month, one idea to help employees had to do with establishing an HSA or Healthcare Savings Account.

But last week, the board opted instead for the prescription drug plan.

Morse said, “Well what we have done instead of doing that, we have implemented a prescription drug card that will help employees when and if they need prescription drugs. It creates a co-pay system, so they wouldn’t have to pay for that outright.  So in lieu of the health-savings account contribution we’re going with a prescription drug card.”

In other business, the board also tabled a discussion on imposing an excise tax to make up for lost revenue from the Energy Excise Tax.

The state of Georgia has eliminated the sales tax that manufacturers pay on the energy they use to make their products.

To make up for that loss in revenue,  the state is allowing local governments to impose their own energy excise tax on local manufacturers if they so choose.

But Morse said the board is reluctant to do so right now.

Morse said, “The commission has reviewed this item once before and declined to implement the excise tax.  Because we have some new commission members, they wanted to talk about it.  We had a brief discussion and just tabled the matter until a later date.  So no decision has been made there.”   

Morse said the board wants to take the matter up again at a later date.