Requires establishment of a long term care insurance program for all state employees and retirees

Title of bill

An act to amend the civil service law, in relation to establishing a long term care insurance program for all state employees and retirees

Purpose or general idea of bill

This bill would require the state to establish a long term care insurance program, to provide every state employee with such coverage in the same manner as health insurance coverage benefits are now available..

Summary of specific provisions

This bill would add a new section 179 to the civil service law, to require the president of civil service with the superintendent of insurance to establish a long term care insurance program for all state employees and retirees. The program would:

1. Provide insurance coverage for admission to, and care and treatment by, a nursing home selected by the employee or retiree in the amount, in the amount not less than the average daily cost of a nursing home in the region in which the employee or retiree resides, with such coverage continuing for as long as such employee resides in the nursing home;

2. Provide for in home care coverage for such employee or retire under the same circumstances;

3. Provide such nursing home coverage and in home care coverage to any employee or retiree over age 70 who was an active state employee as of the date of this section;

4. Mandate the provision of such coverage to all employees and retirees of the state in the same manner as health insurance benefits;

5. Provide that all employees and retirees covered under this program would be ineligible for coverage under medicaid;

and

6. Have a domestic insurer, selected by the president and superintendent, that has experience in underwriting large scale long term insurance program.

Pursuant to this bill, this program would be established on or before July 1, 2010.

Justification

The cost of nursing home, or in home care coverage, is becoming nearly unobtainable for the average middle class person in New York State. As a result, people are either forced to spend their life savings or divest all their assets so as to become destitute and be paid for under state and federal medicaid program. In an aging society, this is resulting in the explosion of ever upward medicaid costs, and forcing citizens to either lose every thing they have worked for in life or to hire estate planners to divest their assets. As a result, medicaid ends up picking us a real time cost of coverage that should be planned for over time.

This bill would use insurance principles, through the use of the time value of money and assessment of risk, to develop a mandatory provided group long term care insurance benefit to all state employees and retirees. Long term care plans currently available to individuals tend neither to be affordable nor valuable, and as a result are rarely purchased. This bill would take advantage of group risk spreading as well as the time value of money, to not only provide state employees and retirees with this valuable coverage, but to also save the state and local governments of New York millions in future medicaid expenditures.

Prior legislative history

2008: S.2392 - Referred to the Senate Committee on Civil Service and Pensions.

Fiscal implications

Although this bill would require the state to pay for a group long term care insurance policy for its state employees and retirees, it would result in millions in cost savings through its medicaid coverage exclusion.

Effective date

This act would take effect immediately.