PATERSON — The city school district is getting a $3.77 million settlement payment to resolve a dispute with the company it hired last year to handle employee medical insurance claims.
The disagreement between Paterson Public Schools and Meritain Health Inc., which is part of Aetna, involved the pricing when district employees used out-of-network health care providers from July 2025 though March 2026.
Meritain has been providing third-party administrative services for the Paterson district's self-insurance program for its workers' medical coverage since July 1, 2025.
The five-page settlement agreement between the district and Meritain did not say how much Paterson Public Schools had sought in the dispute. As part of the deal, the two sides agreed to a confidentiality clause barring public disclosure. They also consented to a "non-disparagement" clause.
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International High School in Paterson ranked first in the city and 241 among all New Jersey public high schools in the 2026 US News rankings with a 95% graduation rate and 23.4 college readiness score.
Paterson Public Schools last year dropped its previous health insurance network, Horizon, and instead entered a three-year contract with Meritain, or Aetna.
District officials at the time said Horizon's estimated cost of claims for the first year of that contract would have been about $96 million. District officials said they would save almost $18 million by switching to Aetna.
The Paterson Board of Education approved the $3.77 million settlement agreement with Aetna in June 2026. But the district would not release the agreement — including the payout amount — until after both sides signed the deal, which happened in the past several weeks.
The $3.77 million was transferred into the account that the Paterson district uses to pay health insurance claims, the agreement said.
This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: Paterson secures nearly $3.8M in settlement over health claims dispute