BILL NUMBER:  S4858

 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.