Rep. Angel A. Demapan (R-Saipan) has pre-filed House Bill 19-37 in an effort to help control the rising costs of insurance premiums. The measure also seeks to\u00a0transfer the administration of the Government\u2019s Group Health and Life Insurance Programs to the Department of Finance.<\/p>\n
\u201cGovernment employees and retirees are struggling to keep up with rising health and life insurance costs,\u201d said Demapan. \u201cIncreasing the number of participants in the government\u2019s group insurance plans will minimize increases in premiums.\u201d<\/p>\n
To help control premium costs, Demapan\u2019s bill would require all government employers\u2014any political subdivision, branch, instrumentality, public corporation, or autonomous board or agency of the government\u2014to participate in the government\u2019s group health and life insurance plans.<\/p>\n
According to the bill, the government\u2019s Group Health and Life Insurance Programs shall be the only health and life insurance benefits offered to the employees by the government. If enacted into law, employees of the government shall have 60 days to enroll into the government\u2019s Group Health and Life Insurance Program.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis subsection does not require employees to participate in the government\u2019s Group Health and Life Insurance Programs,\u201d added Demapan. \u201cEmployee participation is optional subject to section 102 (b).\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Section 102(b) of Demapan\u2019s bill states, \u201cPublic funds may not be expended to pay for health or life insurance benefits that are not provided as part of the government\u2019s Group Health and Life Insurance Programs, nor may public resources be used to withhold or transmit premiums for insurance policies or benefits that are not provided as part of the government\u2019s Group Health and Life Insurance Programs. This restriction does not apply to payroll deductions for Medicare.\u201d<\/p>\n
As for the transfer of functions, Demapan noted that transition is timely for the Northern Mariana Islands Retirement Fund in light of the establishment of the Settlement Fund. At this point, Demapan believes that the Department of Finance is a more appropriate authority to administer the government\u2019s Group Health and Life Insurance program more efficiently.<\/p>\n
Under this Act, the Secretary of Finance may contract with an insuring entity or insuring entities to provide the government\u2019s Group Health and Life Insurance Programs. The Secretary of Finance will also be tasked with establishing a contract procurement process for any contract entered into after the date of this Act.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe procurement and contracting process is very important so that all insurance providers have the opportunity to compete and the government too would have the opportunity to select the best proposal offered,\u201d said Demapan. \u201cThe bottom line here is that we need to open up access to insurance coverage, but it must be affordable.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Rep. Angel A. Demapan (R-Saipan) has pre-filed House Bill 19-37 in an effort to help…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[54,55,21,733],"class_list":["post-193819","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-agency","tag-health-2","tag-life","tag-settlement-fund"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193819","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/28"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=193819"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193819\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=193819"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=193819"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=193819"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}