By Joseph Edelen

DOVER — Two core recommendations of the Retiree Healthcare Benefits Advisory Subcommittee are heading to the governor’s desk.

The House of Representatives passed House Bills 281 and 282 unanimously Thursday, just a day after a vote produced the same result in the Senate.

“We sat through I don’t know how many hours of meetings for this, and one thing was very clear in listening to the retirees, people that were affected by the suggested change to Medicare Advantage,” said Senate Minority Whip Brian Pettyjohn, R-Georgetown, who served on the subcommittee during their 10-plus months of work, on Wednesday.

“They didn’t feel like the process that led up to that was open and transparent enough and that they were heard. What we did here, what the committee did, what is being done in this series of bills, is to… let them know that they were heard and that the process moving forward would be better.”

Of the two proposals, House Bill 281 would remove Medicare Advantage as an option for retiree health care in the ongoing request for proposals cycle, though it was amended in the House to clarify that those hired on or after Jan. 1, 2025, could have Medicare Advantage as an option.

Its companion, House Bill 282, would boost transparency and accountability on the State Employee Benefits Committee by shifting membership and leadership positions in the group

The bill was amended in the House to restore the Department of Human Resources’ secretary as a voting member of the committee, maintaining the Office of Management and Budget director as chair, and to make the controller general a nonvoting member of the group.

Both bills were amended again in the Senate, as Majority Leader Bryan Townsend, D-Newark - who also served on the advisory subcommittee – introduced a change that worked in tandem with the companion bill.

The amendments require the State Employee Benefits Committee to hold public comment before the selection of an offered Medicare Advantage plan for employees hired on or after Jan. 1, 2025. Senators voted unanimously to attach the amendment to the bill.

“What’s really important about (this) is that retirees, as we all know and appreciate, have felt very strongly about the process that was used to pursue a Medicare Advantage plan … more than a year and a half ago,” Sen. Townsend said on the Senate floor. “This will ensure that public comment is afforded … prior to the decision being made to even seek the RFP.”

During the hearing in the House on Thursday, House Minority Leader Mike Ramone, R-Newark, and Rep. Paul Baumbach, D-Newark, praised the legislation for addressing the concerns of retirees dating back to the state’s adoption of Medicare Advantage in 2022.

Delaware Superior Court issued a stay on the implementation of a Medicare Advantage plan adopted in the fall of 2022 after a group of retirees challenged the state’s selection of the coverage. They argued that, as state pensioners, benefits offered on the plan were not what they were originally promised by the state.

Since then, the Retiree Healthcare Benefits Advisory Subcommittee had worked to develop recommendations for the future of retiree health care that could be enacted by the legislature.

House Bills 281 and 282 were the first in that effort, and prime sponsor Rep. Baumbach —who was a vice chair of the committee — has since introduced several bills that build off subcommittee recommendations pertaining to fiscal savings and the state’s $8.9 billion other post-employment benefits liability; $8.4 billion of which is unfunded.

After the bills’ passage, Gov. John Carney’s office did not have comment on the measures.