District 10 Louisville Metro Council Member Josie Raymond speaking during a recent committee in early March.(Roberto Roldan / LPM)Louisville officials are exploring whether to close the health insurance gap for city employees, providing new hires with day-one coverage.The proposal currently before the Metro Council would change the city’s existing policy providing health insurance on the first day of the month following an employee’s start date. That means insurance for a new hire can take up to 30 days to kick in, forcing them to purchase expensive short-term health insurance or even go without.Louisville Metro Government is one of the city’s largest employees, with thousands of full-time and part-time employees. The city onboards about 140 new hires each month.District 10 Council Member Josie Raymond, a Democrat, is one of the primary sponsors of the proposed change. Raymond said this was one of the first pieces of legislation she began working on after she went without health insurance for a month in early 2025, when she was sworn into office.“This is a problem we identified immediately upon coming to council,” Raymond said. “We lived it, and we knew that our colleagues across Metro Government — doing much more dangerous work, some might say much more important work — were also going to be uninsured.”Raymond said the current health insurance gap risks sticking new employees with "crippling medical bills” if they or someone in their family suffers a heart attack or breaks a leg during that time.So far, nine other Metro Council members have signed on to cosponsor the ordinance, including Raymond’s coauthor, District 6 Council Member J.P. Lyninger. All of them are Democrats.Raymond said she’s been discussing closing the health insurance gap with Republican council members and Mayor Craig Greenberg’s administration for about a year. She said everyone is on board “in theory,” but there are questions about how much the change would cost and about timing.As Metro Council has debated the proposal in recent weeks, those questions remain a sticking point.Support for ‘the concept’ Proponents of providing immediate health insurance coverage to city employees have pointed to what’s happened at the state level.In late 2024, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear announced his administration would be closing the gap. That change went into effect at the start of last year.Lyninger said he and Raymond decided to file the ordinance now because Greenberg and his staff are starting to put together a proposed budget for the next fiscal year, which starts July 1.“I think it's important that we think about the budget in terms of priorities and what we believe in,” said Lyninger, who is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America. “Metro Government should believe in taking care of workers and taking care of workers’ families.”Lyninger said the ordinance sponsors have estimated that the change would cost the city about $1.7 million per year. Louisville Metro Government’s annual budget is more than $1 billion.The mayor, however, has said there are other insurance costs to be considered, and he’s expressed concerns about whether the city can afford to do this right now.At a press conference earlier this month, Greenberg said he doesn’t think “this is going to be the year that the funding is going to be available.” He said the city has already learned of a “significant premium increase” for its current health insurance offerings.“Ensuring that we provide [existing employees] with affordable, good options for health care is our first priority,” Greenberg said.In a follow-up email to LPM News, Matt Mudd, Greenberg’s spokesperson, said the city provides employees with multiple health insurance options, including one plan that has a $0 premium.Mudd said the mayor wants to continue providing the same options at the same cost to employees. Doing that is expected to cost the city an additional $13 million in the next fiscal year.“While the mayor supports the concept of day-one health insurance, it is projected to cost $1.7M in addition to the $13M needed to maintain the current benefits, and would only serve a limited number of metro employees,” Mudd said in the email.As an alternative, Greenberg has proposed giving all new hires day-one access to Metro Employee Wellness Centers, which are low-cost clinics run by the health care company Concentra.The proposed ordinance is currently in Metro Council’s Equity, Community Affairs, Housing, Health and Education Committee, which includes three of the ordinance’s sponsors. Republicans, who hold half the seats on the committee, appear skeptical of the proposal.District 18 Council Member Marilyn Parker said during a committee meeting earlier this month that she didn’t think the proposal would improve Louisville’s recruiting and retention.“I came from the private sector, from health care, and every time I was employed by a new facility I had to wait three months for health care coverage,” she said. “No one questioned that because that’s just standard in the private sector.”Parker said she doesn’t believe that the insurance gap is going to “make or break” anyone’s decision to work for the city. She said she’d be open to a version of the ordinance that only provided day-one catastrophic coverage to people in high-risk jobs.District 13 Council Member Dan Seum, Jr., another Republican, requested a detailed financial impact statement on closing the insurance gap, which passed the committee.The ordinance is expected to be held until the Greenberg administration provides the statement. ...read more read less