CEO of California State Employees Health Care Program Praises Health Care Reform

The CEO of the California Public Employees' Retirement System (CalPERS), the largest non-federal purchaser of health benefits in the country, sent a letter Friday to the Secretary of Health and Human Services listing the ways that the Affordable Care Act has already benefited the program’s enrollees.

In her letter to HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, Anne Stausboll, CEO of the CalPERS, reported on some of the success stories that CalPERS has experienced implementing provisions of health care reform.

These success stories include:

• Enrolling 27,000 new 26 years old or younger dependents to their parent’s health care plans – an improvement which increased premiums less than 1 percent.
• The elimination of lifetime limits on the dollar value of benefits has provided enrollees a sense of security.
• The Early Retiree Reinsurance Program intended to mitigate the cost of covering pre-Medicare retirees, and has reduced CalPERS premium increases by more than 3 percent, a savings of nearly $200 million for their early retirees.

In response to the letter, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) was quoted as saying, “Already, tens of thousands of families across California – and millions of Americans – are seeing the concrete benefits of health reform.  The Patient’s Bill of Rights in health reform is now protecting Americans from the worst abuses of the insurance industry, such as lifetime limits, and CalPERS is showing us the real, human impact of these and other reform provisions.”

 -- Energy and Commerce Committee