GM Audits Dependent Health Care Rolls

General Motors Corp. has launched a dependent health care audit of its 80,700 hourly workers and 345,000 retirees in an effort to reduce the more than $4.6 billion it spent on health care last year, said Michelle Bunker, a GM spokeswoman.

Bunker said the audit, which is being conducted by Highland Park, Michigan-based Budco, a benefits communications and dependent database developer, will run through 2009’s first quarter.

Initially, she said, workers and retirees would have the opportunity to self-report ineligible dependents, who will be removed from GM’s health care rolls with no repercussions.

In a second phase, to be launched this fall, employees and retirees will be asked to provide documentation—such as a tax return or school transcript—proving that their dependents are eligible for coverage. Employees may be asked to compensate GM for coverage for ineligible dependents discovered in this second phase, the spokeswoman said.

Bunker said the Detroit-based automaker has just finished an audit of its 36,600 active salaried employees and 97,400 retirees, and found the majority of ineligible dependents “were children who have aged out because they are no longer attending school.”

She declined to provide more details of that audit’s results.

Filed by Judy Greenwald of Business Insurance, a sister publication of Workforce Management. To comment, e-mail editors@workforce.com.

Workforce Management’s online news feed is now available via Twitter.