May 7th, 2021
State employees are likely in for a much more favorable situation with their health plan than the doomsday scenario predicted before the session began.
Assemblywoman Maggie Carlton (D-Las Vegas), chair of the Ways and Means Committee, announced a plan during a Friday joint budget meeting to give participants in the Public Employees Benefits’ Program (PEBP) a one-month “premium holiday” during which enrollees don’t have to pay their share of their health insurance costs. That would apply to about 44,000 active and retired public employees, according to legislative staff.
Carlton said the arrangement was intended “to do something for state employees who have gone through a lot this last year and a half” while not adjusting the rates for the health plans during an ongoing open enrollment period. The expense would be covered through general fund dollars and would cost about $12 million over the biennium.
“We know how important health care is to families, especially now, and what the cost of that health care can be to a family,” Carlton said. “I still find it quite sad that we still have state employees that are on Medicaid. That’s another thing that we need to fix as we move forward. But this is one thing that we can do for state employees at this moment in time.”
Carlton also proposed restoring a budgeted cut in how much the state contributes each month to the Medicare plans of retirees through a “Health Reimbursement Arrangement” (HRA). The governor had proposed reducing the contribution to the equivalent of $165 a month for employees with 15 years of service; the committee is restoring it to $195.
That change will cost $6.6 million over the biennium, paid for through expected excess reserve fees collected by PEBP.
The motions were approved unanimously by members of a joint Senate and Assembly budget committee.
Current and retired state employees cried foul in January when PEBP proposed a slew of benefits cuts and program reductions to try to meet an initial 6 percent budget reduction target. Proposed cuts included reducing life insurance benefits from $25,000 for an active employee to $15,000 and from $12,500 for a retiree to $7,500, eliminating a long-term disability insurance program and lowering Medicare HRA contributions from $13 to $11 a month per year of service.
PEBP Executive Officer Laura Rich said in an interview that the idea of a “premium holiday” came about as a way for lawmakers and the system to mitigate some of the proposed cuts even though the system’s open enrollment period had opened last month — making it difficult to change things such as plan design, deductibles and copays for the current plan year.
“The new options that were presented were last minute options, based on the fact that there appears to be more funding available, and something that the legislators had a desire to fund,” she said.
Sen. Ben…
Read More: Budget Committee Passes Surprise ‘Premium Holiday’ For Public Employee