In a ripple effect from the state’s new collective bargaining law, the city of Madison is attempting to push through legislation that would create a new health insurance plan for city firefighters and police officers in hopes of saving the city money.

The proposed changes to the healthcare plan would ask firefighters, police officers and supervisors to pay an extra deductible in an effort to fill the city’s $4 to $6 million deficit in the annual budget.

The new plan would affect the insurance coverage of 800 city employees. According to Madison Human Resources Director Brad Wirtz, 350 firefighters, along with 450 police officers and their supervisors, would be subject to the changed policies.

Each active city official would be asked to pay $500 for a single deductible and $1,000 for a family. The plan is expected to raise $553,000 toward the city budget, Wirtz said.

This deductible would be added to the existing coverage, which used to be covered by the city with a budget of more than $280,000 in 2010, according to the City of Madison finance website.

Madison Human Resources Director Brad Wirtz emphasized the deductibles would be the only change made to the existing plan for employees.

“The reason it is only MFD and MPD on the plan is that other Madison unions signed contracts through 2014. Our main goal is to help fill the budget gap and avoid layoffs,” he said.

The Madison firefighters’ and police officers’ unions were among the few who did not choose to negotiate new contracts after the collective bargaining law was approved by the Legislature earlier this year.

As a result of this chain of events, officials do not currently intend to extend the plan to other public workers, Wirtz added. He said this is the reason the city entered into talks with both the firefighters’ and police officers’ union.

However, the firefighters’ supervisors’ union chose not to agree to the change in healthcare plan after rejecting the collective bargaining legislation.

Ald. Joseph Clausius, District 17, a member of the Board of Estimates, said it was presented to the body after the city comptroller had completed negotiations with union leaders.

“We had pretty much ran the other unions out [to 2014], and it was a unanimous decision to put this resolution through,” Clausius said. “We want to save the tax payers and the city money.”

While Clausius said this proposal is the first of its kind presented to the Board of Estimates, he said it would be some time until the board is asked to pass another similar resolution because of the nature of the other union contracts.

“We really want to stress that our goal is savings for the city of Madison,” he added.

Clausius also said he had not heard of any controversy over the plan recently from either City Council members or union stakeholders involved in the negotiations surrounding the new healthcare policy change.

The Madison Fire Department did not immediately return calls for comment on Wednesday.