The interim director of the state agency responsible for Arkansas' health insurance exchanges would keep her temporary title but get a $35,000 pay raise, bringing her salary to $165,000, under a recommendation by a committee on Wednesday.
The Arkansas Health Insurance Marketplace board of directors' personnel committee also recommended that the board revisit how to fill the director's position in six months, when board members might know more about the future of the agency.
In the meantime, the committee supported a recommendation, voiced by board member Mark Meadors, that the board give interim Director Angela Lowther "more support and outreach and coaching so that she can work with us and help us achieve all our goals."
Meadors said after the meeting that the recommendation wasn't meant to suggest any deficiency in Lowther's performance, which he said has been "fabulous."
"We just want to keep everything stable at this point in time," he said.
He noted that, with a salary of $130,000, Lowther isn't the marketplace's highest-paid employee. Director of Operations Chris Hopper makes $158,000.
In a statement, Lowther said she was "humbled by the committee's vote of confidence in my leadership."
"At the end of the day, this decision is about providing stability and a high standard for Arkansans," she said.
The committee's recommendation will go to the full board for approval on Sept. 27.
Created by the Legislature in 2013, the marketplace set up a state-run health insurance exchange for small businesses in 2015 using money from a federal grant.
Enrollment in that exchange will end Nov. 15 because Arkansas Blue Cross and Blue Shield, the only insurance company offering plans through the exchange, is dropping out.
The marketplace also had explored setting up a state-run exchange for individual consumers, but scrapped that idea at Gov. Asa Hutchinson's request.
Instead, the marketplace certifies the plans sold in the state through federal healthcare.gov website and promotes enrollment in them.
Money for the marketplace's operations comes from a fee, collected from insurance companies, equal to 3 percent of the premiums for non-Medicaid plans sold on Arkansas' exchanges.
Acts 4 and 5, passed by the Legislature during a special session on health care matters this year, direct the Legislative Council to study the marketplace and insurance exchanges in other states and make recommendations on the marketplace's future.
At a meeting of the council's Arkansas Health Insurance Marketplace Oversight Subcommittee last month, Insurance Commissioner Allen Kerr said his department could save consumers millions of dollars by taking over responsibility for the exchanges from the marketplace starting in 2019.
The exchange also could be affected by proposals in Congress to repeal parts of the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which established rules governing exchanges and provides subsidies to help low-income consumers buy coverage through them.
Lowther became interim director in February after the previous director, Cheryl Gardner, accepted a job as director of the agency responsible for New Mexico's health insurance exchanges.
The salary recommended by the Arkansas board's personnel committee on Wednesday is the same salary Gardner started with when she became the Arkansas marketplace's first director in 2014. Gardner's salary eventually increased to $175,100.
A 2013 graduate of the University of Arkansas at Little Rock's William H. Bowen School of Law, Lowther started work at the marketplace as an insurance carrier liaison, with an annual salary of $70,000, in July 2015. She was later promoted to director of policy and compliance.
Sen. Ronald Caldwell, R-Wynne and a chairman of a council subcommittee assigned to study and monitor the marketplace, said he wants to know more about Lowther's recommended pay increase.
"If she's doing the work of the director, and that's what the director payment is, then they may have justification in giving that pay raise," he said.
Metro on 09/07/2017