Insurance benefits postponed

CARSON CITY -- A panel that oversees the state health insurance plan voted Thursday to delay an effort to offer benefits to domestic partners .

A budget enhancement item that would have required more than $4 million a year in state funding to offer the benefit to domestic partners, both same sex and opposite sex, of insured employees was rejected by the Public Employees Benefits Program Board until a time when there may be money to fund it.

The vote was 6-2 to delay the benefit for the 2009-11 budget.

The board has been told by Gov. Jim Gibbons that he would not include the enhancement in his budget because of revenue concerns, but the Legislature could still take up the issue on its own.

The board also has been told by Gibbons to plan a budget for the next two years that assumes no increase in state support for the self-funded health insurance program for state employees because of declining tax revenues.

The vote to delay funding also means that a regulation authorizing the benefit now before the Legislative Commission is moot. The regulation did not include funding, only the policy.

The commission considered the regulation in June but delayed action while it sought more information.

With a zero growth budget sought by Gibbons, the board was told that to pay for the benefit it would have to come up with the money itself, either by reducing other benefits or increasing premiums charged to employees.

The original request to include domestic partners in the state health plan came from the Nevada System of Higher Education. University and college presidents told the board last year that extending benefits to partners is essential to their ability to recruit top professors and administrators.

Jim Richardson, a professor at the University of Nevada, Reno, asked the board not to wait on moving forward with the benefit, which is offered in different forms at higher education systems in all Western states but Idaho.

He said other options would cost much less, such as offering the benefit only to same-sex partners, or requiring state employees to pay for the cost of the benefit to a partner.

"I would hope you keep the concept alive," Richardson said. "We need it."

Board member Jacque Ewing-Taylor asked what the cost would be to extend the benefit to same-sex partners only, and was told about $1.5 million a year. Dividing the cost of the benefit among the participating members of the plan would cost each individual about $4.50 a month, she noted.

"I would be more than happy for my premium to go up by four and a half dollars a month in order to cover this group," Ewing-Taylor said. "I maintain this is something we need to do for equity's sake."

If the options are doing nothing or covering same-gender domestic partners, the choice should be to cover this group at the nominal cost, she said.

The board has been receptive to offering the benefit from a policy point of view. The only issue now is the cost.

Board member Chris Campbell made the motion to delay action on the enhanced benefit.

"I remain very supportive of this enhancement as a concept," he said. "But it has become clear over the last few months and moving forward that now is not the right time."

The cost to provide the same state-paid subsidy to cover domestic partners and their children as is provided to married spouses -- estimated at $4.1 million in the first year of the budget and $4.5 million in the second year -- is significantly more than the $2.7 million figure used previously.

Leslie Johnstone, executive officer of the state health plan, said the higher cost estimate is the result of both increasing health care costs and the larger number of participants in the plan.