ABSTRACT
The marketplace for health benefits for public sector employees is large and complex with a great variety of approaches for providing care and a difficult patchwork of regulatory and collective bargaining regulation to deal with in designing a plan. Public sector workers' plans are subject to an additional constraint provided by the political nature of the process. The products sold to public sector plans are not regulated as ERISA plans, given the exclusion of government plans and the differential regulation of collectively bargained plans under the HMO act. This article attempts to guide the reader through some of the difficulties of this marketplace, pointing out pitfalls and opportunities where they appear.
Subject(s)
Collective Bargaining , Health Benefit Plans, Employee/legislation & jurisprudence , Employee Retirement Income Security Act , Health Maintenance Organizations/legislation & jurisprudence , Negotiating , Preferred Provider Organizations/legislation & jurisprudence , Privacy , Public Sector , State Government , United StatesABSTRACT
The California Health Security Act is likely to appear on the November 1994 ballot. The bill would provide universal coverage to California residents and assign the state as the single payer for all medical care provided, financed with funding for programs already in place, employer payroll taxes, individual income taxes and taxes on tobacco products.