THE GROUP INSURANCE COMMISSION, or the GIC, as it’s known on Beacon Hill, is a quasi-independent state agency that tends to get too many mentions in the news.

The agency, first set up in 1955, handles health insurance and other benefits for 460,000 public employees and retirees, as well as their dependents and survivors. Other groups include municipalities, housing authorities’ personnel, and some teachers.

But the GIC hit the headlines last month when it received a last-minute $240 million infusion from state coffers to cover claims for the rest of the 2025 fiscal year. How did it get to that point?

This week on the monthly Health or Consequences episode of The Codcast, John McDonough of the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health and Paul Hattis of the Lown Institute spoke with Matt Veno, the GIC’s executive director, and asked that question.

Veno, who took the job in 2020, just before the Covid-19 pandemic hit, said the GIC has found itself in a similar situation before, but it hasn’t happened in a number of years. He’d previously served as a deputy commissioner in the state’s Division of Insurance and handled government affairs at Harvard Pilgrim Health Care.

Veno said the agency, for the 2025 fiscal year, had been adequately funded, based on their projections last year.

“But I’d say, you know, we have long standing trends that everyone is seeing in the healthcare marketplace now with rising costs to deliver medical services and prescription drugs,” he said, pointing to “specific challenges” in the introduction of weight loss drugs like Wegovy and Zepbound.

“Over the course of the last year, we’ve spent over $100 million on those drugs for a small subset of our membership,” he said, a wave that hit the GIC after it had already set insurance rates.

Looking toward the year ahead, Veno said he sees some big increases in spending for surgeries and cardiac conditions. “We are adequately funded to meet the need as we see it now,” he said. “But it’s a super turbulent time, and it’s just so hard to predict what spending trends will look like a year from now.”

During the episode, Veno also discusses the one change the GIC made that goes into effect July 1 (12:00); the two “colliding crises” in Massachusetts health care (17:20); and what Beacon Hill lawmakers need to prioritize in this legislative session (20:28).