Its name is dull but its mission important, and over the past couple of years the Group Health Insurance Program with Wisconsin’s Department of Employee Trust Funds has gotten a lot of national attention for something close to a miracle: containing the costs of health insurance coverage.
That is partly because ETF administers a program with a lot of buying clout. It purchases health plans for nearly 230,000 state employees, including UW staff, and local government workers. That is the biggest pool of employees in Wisconsin.