Dear teacher -

        Go to this web page: www.olemiss.edu/~annek/health

On this page there are links to people you can write or send email to.  At this point, we think it is most important to have our state senators and representatives contact Max Arinder of PEER, the legislative oversight committee which can review actions
taken by DFA concerning the state health insurance plan.

The other thing you can do is contact Ronnie Musgrove who also says he is working on this.

On that web page there is also a link where you can sign up for an email list.  Anne Klingen is using the list to send
interested people information as we find out more.

For example, we learned last week that in the November newsletter, which is not yet out, DFA will announce that in additional
to all the other changes there will de a new $50 deductible for prescription drugs on top of everything else.

Obviously, DFA is not complying with the requirement to give employees complete information 30 days before we have to make benefit decisions.

Some of us are also writing Unicare/Cost Care and asking for out of network certification for our specialists.  We ask them to
certify there are no specialists of the needed type in our area.  This will at least prevent us from getting stuck with the higher deductible and the 65% copay.  We will probably still be stuck with the charges over allowable charges.  We are not positive this will work, but it is a way to attempt to protect ourselves and an way to make another part of the system aware of just how much extra work this will create.

Mary

teacher wrote:
>
> Hi.
> I am a teacher in Desoto County, and we are very concerned about the new
> insurance group.  Please let me know what I and the other teachers can
> do or who to contact about this. Thank you.

(NAME WITHHELD -  WAITING FOR PERMISSION TO USE NAME - amk 11/18/99)