Providing great benefits is an important part of our mission in Human Resources. We know that health insurance is one of the most important ways we support our faculty and staff. After an extensive due diligence process by Human Resources, which included recommendations from the Benefits Advisory Committee, University Budget Committee, and was based on feedback from both staff and faculty following presentations on all campuses, we have made the decision to follow the overwhelmingly popular choice to change health insurance providers.
Effective January 1, 2022, Pace University’s medical, vision, dental insurance, and Employee Assistance Program (EAP) provider will be Aetna.
The good news is that Aetna will provide faculty and staff with the same coverage we had under Cigna, with a more extensive network of providers. You can check for your provider here (PDF).
While it’s important that we provide quality health care, we must also be mindful of our costs. We regularly solicit proposals from health insurance providers and when we went into the health insurance marketplace this year, Cigna came back with a 15.7% cost increase for 2022. This was not competitive and the negative impact to both the University and the faculty and staff was too great.
Aetna's bid, while not the lowest of the bids we received, has the greatest value in cost, network strength, and overall quality. In addition, the dental plan cost under Aetna will be reduced by 11%. Aetna mirrored our three current health insurance plans, as well as the ways in which each of the plans operates, so deductibles and copayments will also remain the same.
Aetna is one of the largest insurers in the country and one of the highest-rated for getting their members the care that they need. While they are owned by CVS, which will allow us to take advantage of their pharmacy size and buying power, the prescription benefit they provide will not be limited to CVS.
Additionally, Aetna is not new to Pace. We transitioned our retiree medical plan to Aetna at the beginning of 2020 and Payflex, our current Flexible Spending Plan and COBRA administrator, is also owned by Aetna.
Our Human Resources team will provide more details about the plans, including the dates for open enrollment, and opportunities to hear directly from Aetna leading up to the open enrollment period. In the meantime, we have prepared basic FAQs which can be accessed here (PDF).
We strongly believe that the relationship we have with Aetna will continue to grow and provide a critical benefit for our faculty and staff.
