Sarlo Pleased That Task Force’s Third Party Administrator Recommendations Align With His Legislation

Senate Budget Chair Looks Forward to Working with Administration to Enact Legislation He Introduced in October to Provide Savings in Plan Year 2020

TRENTON – Senator Paul Sarlo (D-Bergen/Passaic), who chairs the Senate Budget and Appropriations Committee and co-chaired the bipartisan Economic and Fiscal Policy Workgroup, today issued the following statement regarding the release of the interim report of the Governor’s Health Benefits Quality and Value Task Force:

“The recommendations of the Governor’s Task Force validate the Third Party Administrator reforms that were discussed in the Senate Budget Committee last spring, recommended by our Economic and Fiscal Policy Workgroup this summer and contained in the Senate bill (S3042) that I introduced in October.

“I look forward to working with the Governor’s Office and the Treasury Department to ensure we enact legislation that provides for effective independent real-time auditing of health insurance claims in time for the procurement of a Third Party Administrator. This will generate hundreds of millions of dollars of savings in Plan Year 2020.

“Unbundling the Third Party Administrator contract for claims adjudication from the health insurance provider network contract – as the task force also recommended – is essential to ensure that we don’t have ‘the fox guarding the henhouse.’

“I was also pleased to see the task force concur with our provisions requiring the Third Party Administrator to have a strict fiduciary responsibility to the state, and to guarantee that the state will have ownership and access to all health insurance claims data.

“As both Treasury and the public employee unions have recognized, this data is vital to analyzing healthcare costs and redesigning our public employee and retiree healthcare system in future years to maximize savings.

“I was also pleased to see the task force demand clear performance metrics, emphasize innovation and issue a clarion call for the state to leverage its $7 billion in annual state and local government healthcare expenditures to maximize savings from providers.”