Fiscal Note & Local Impact Statement
127 th General Assembly of Ohio
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CONTENTS: |
Requires
health insurers and Medicaid to provide benefits for
colorectal cancer screening and laboratory tests for cancer under specified
conditions |
·
No
direct fiscal effect on the state.
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LOCAL
GOVERNMENT |
FY 2008 |
FY 2009 |
FUTURE YEARS |
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Counties, municipalities,
townships, school districts |
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Revenues |
- 0 - |
- 0 - |
- 0 - |
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Expenditures |
Potential increase |
Potential increase |
Potential increase |
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Other Local Governments |
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Revenues |
- 0 - |
- 0 - |
- 0 - |
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Expenditures |
- 0 - |
- 0 - |
- 0 - |
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Note: For most local governments, the fiscal year is the calendar year. The school district fiscal year is July 1 through June 30.
·
The
required benefit may increase the cost to local governments of providing health
benefits to employees and their dependents.
LSC is not able to quantify the potential increase due to data
limitations—in particular due to lack of data on whether the benefit is already
provided by health plans offered by political subdivisions.
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S.B. 278 requires health
insuring corporations (HICs), sickness and accident insurers, public employee
benefit plans, and Medicaid to provide benefits for colorectal cancer
screenings and for laboratory tests for cancer. The requirement applies when the patient is nonsymptomatic and is
either (1) over age 50 or (2) under age 50 and at high risk for colorectal
cancer according to the most recent screening guidelines published by the
American Cancer Society. HICs, sickness
and accident insurers, and public employee benefit plans are permitted to
require copayments and deductibles as long as they are required under the same
terms as they are required for other conditions.
Fiscal effects
The required benefits could
increase the costs to the state and to political subdivisions of providing
health benefits to employees and their dependents. They could also increase the costs of Medicaid. Whether costs increase in actuality would
depend on whether these benefits are already provided by the state and by local
governments.
These benefits are already
provided under all health plans offered to state employees. Furthermore, they are currently provided
under Medicaid. Therefore, the bill
would not have a fiscal effect on the state.
Due to data limitations, LSC
staff are unable to quantify the potential fiscal effect on political
subdivisions. The cost to local
governments depends on the number of employees who would be newly eligible for
this benefit times the cost of the benefit.
LSC staff do not have data on benefit coverage of health plans at the
local level. Officials with Montgomery
and Muskingum counties were contacted, and they reported that employees and
beneficiaries of those counties already have this benefit provided under
wellness programs available to them.
LSC staff believe it is quite possible that this is more broadly true,
and that there may be no cost to local governments because they already provide
this benefit. We cannot confirm this
without a more extensive survey of local officials, however.
The potential cost to local
governments could exceed the "yes" local impact threshold used by LSC[1]
if this is generally a new benefit, however.
Data from the Ohio Public Employees Retirement System show that there
were 36,637 female active members between the ages of 50 and 64 in the defined
benefit valuation as of December 31, 2003.
If the number of male active members in this age range is approximately
the same, then the number of local government employees that could be eligible
would be over 73,000. If the cost of
the benefit were just $100 per year, that would translate to the possibility of
costs to local governments up to $7.3 million per year or more.
LSC fiscal staff: Ross Miller, Senior Economist
[1] A "yes" local
impact is assigned if the cost statewide for all counties, municipalities,
school districts, and townships exceeds $100,000 per year.