Explanation

The rising cost of health insurance presents a continuing challenge to communities within The Episcopal Church seeking to provide quality benefits for health care to their employees at an affordable cost. While the Church Pension Group has moved to control costs to the fullest extent of their ability, the church itself needs to recommend specific changes to keep costs affordable.

At present, not all benefit levels within the Episcopal Church Medical Trust are self-supporting, which leads to rising costs across all plans offered to employees and dependents. Many of our benefit offerings are also out of step with those offered to lay and clergy employees in our peer denominations.

This resolution expresses the desire of the church for CPG to take steps to contain costs within the Denominational Health Plan by taking steps to make each benefit level self-sustaining to the extent possible, and by seeking to keep benefit offerings in line with those offered by our sibling denominations.