Bill Summary: HF573

• Requires school employers (districts, service cooperatives, intermediate districts, and vocational education centers) to purchase health insurance through the statewide public employees insurance program beginning January 1, 2014, as existing contracts expire.

• School employers with 1,000 or more insured lives on the date of enactment may opt out if exclusive representatives jointly agree, or if they receive a cheaper bid for equivalent benefits.

• Establishes a 14-member Labor-Management Committee with seven representatives from the Minnesota School Boards Association and seven from Education Minnesota, SEIU, AFSCME, and the Minnesota School Employees Association to oversee the school employee insurance program.

• Allows the commissioner to impose a reserve surcharge during the first three years of school employee enrollment and to impose startup enrollment fees on school employee premiums to repay temporary funding used for administrative costs.

• Requires entities providing past coverage to school employees to provide nonidentifiable aggregate claims data to the commissioner at no charge for underwriting purposes.