Meetings
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[Alyssa Black (Chair)]: Yep. Oh, hi. Welcome, everybody. I don't know what day that is.
[Jennifer Carbee (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: It is May May twenty fifth.
[Alyssa Black (Chair)]: We are just here to hear an amendment that's coming on S197 proposed by some members over in Ways and Means after they did their walkthrough of this bill the other day. And I think I'd start with Nolan, if you want to sort of tell us why we're doing this.
[Nolan Langweil (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Sure. Actually, Jen, if you
[Alyssa Black (Chair)]: want, can you pull up Why we should consider this?
[Nolan Langweil (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Can you pull up on screen draft 2.2?
[Jennifer Carbee (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yes.
[Nolan Langweil (Joint Fiscal Office)]: And put it on page six.
[Alyssa Black (Chair)]: So there is a draft 2.2 of the amendment?
[Jennifer Carbee (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: This was no. This was the bill that you passed. Oh, okay. Bill we passed.
[Nolan Langweil (Joint Fiscal Office)]: I'm gonna show you why I why did Okay.
[Jennifer Carbee (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Okay. Page six.
[Nolan Langweil (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Director, no language of a fist clause. You're called page section three that is on and before 01/15/2021, the director of the Blueprint for Health in consultation with the Blueprint Executive Committee, steering committee, strong reports to the health, blah blah blah, and there's 11 things that they're going to report Scroll down to A11 on page
[Jennifer Carbee (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I'm on page seven.
[Nolan Langweil (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Page seven, it's included in that thing as recommended process for moving to healthcare claims tax. That group is not the right group that should be looking at claims tax. The blueprint steering committee, they know nothing about claims tax. AHS and the tax department should be looking at claims tax. So that's why we made the recommendation. So Jen will show you the draft and that's what it does.
[Alyssa Black (Chair)]: Thank you for that clarification. Go ahead, Leslie. So we never took any testimony from the tax department, does that matter or what?
[Brian Cina (Member)]: Without ways and means, we don't do that.
[Alyssa Black (Chair)]: So that would be their job, not our job.
[Jennifer Carbee (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: And we're not asking them to actually do anything.
[Alyssa Black (Chair)]: I mean, we're asking them to look at it.
[Jennifer Carbee (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Let's look at the language. Jen Carvey, Office of Legislative Council, S197. This is a proposal of amendment from representatives Kornheiser and Kimball, and they would first assist the kind of technical stuff of making your list go from, you know, end with an and and the last one between nine and ten instead of ten and eleven and striking out. Subdivision 11, that one Nolan just showed you in its entirety. And then adding a new section, section 3A, Funding to the Blueprint, Health Care Claims Tax. This would have, by January 15, the Agency of Human Services, in consultation with the Department of Taxes, recommend to this committee, the committee across the hall, and your Senate counterparts a process by which funding for the Blueprint may be transitioned from the mechanisms established in the current Blueprint subchapter to the health care claims tax established in its chapter as identified in the report that the director of the Blueprint submitted to the General Assembly in accordance with the 2023 Act Act 51. And it says the agency's recommendations shall include any modifications to the tax rates established in the existing claims tax that would be necessary to fully support the operation of the blueprint as amended by section two of this act and a potential timeline for M and So
[Alyssa Black (Chair)]: we're taking it away from the blueprint steering committee and we're giving it to It was
[Jennifer Carbee (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: the direct.
[Alyssa Black (Chair)]: Direct, it It was the blueprint And in collaboration with then now it's AHS in consultation with the Department of Texas. Great. Any questions for Jen or Nolan?
[Unidentified Committee Member]: I think one for Nolan. You said it raised 36,000,000 goes into the
[Nolan Langweil (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Yeah, have it in front of
[Unidentified Committee Member]: but that's what I said. Somewhere around there.
[Nolan Langweil (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Yeah, and a portion of it goes to the HHS. What this would be looking at would be, you increase the rate, the rate of the blank Blueprint, and in that process you maybe take away the direct payments from the insurers to the Blueprint to be supplanted. So one thing they'd be looking at if they supplanted. So the rates that's in there now obviously wouldn't be sufficient enough. They would have to be looking at what would they, is this an appropriate source to pay for it? And if so, how much would they need to increase the rate to get there?
[Unidentified Committee Member]: I'm sorry, what's the other portion goes to?
[Nolan Langweil (Joint Fiscal Office)]: So it's a 0.999% tax on claims. 0.199% goes to the Health Information Technology Fund. And the rest goes to the general fund. Alright, perfect. So they shouldn't be taking the money out of that, it would be, is looking at it as a source, is it an appropriate source to be funding blueprint in lieu of the current funding source?
[Unidentified Committee Member]: That's a question for another day then. That's what they're asking.
[Alyssa Black (Chair)]: Yeah, perfect. Brian.
[Brian Cina (Member)]: Do we know what the fiscal impact is of having the agency of human services write this report?
[Nolan Langweil (Joint Fiscal Office)]: I did not ask them, but I would suspect it would be de minimis.
[Alyssa Black (Chair)]: Can you say that again?
[Nolan Langweil (Joint Fiscal Office)]: And there was
[Alyssa Black (Chair)]: no report, no recommendation.
[Unidentified Committee Member]: Don't get it that often.
[Nolan Langweil (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Don't know about this language yet. They don't think this is It's not the kind of thing that they would need to hire consultants for. Is the kind of work that I know it was in their capacity to do it because I've done it a bit.
[Alyssa Black (Chair)]: And it's not a report. It's that they come back with their recommend. I I always put
[Jennifer Carbee (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: a report in section headings so we can keep track of what's going back to the legislature, but it is recommendations, which may be in a flexible formwork. And then Leslie had
[Alyssa Black (Chair)]: a question. It's a question for
[Brian Cina (Member)]: the committee, not Nolan or Jen, so I can wait, but I wanna make sure I get it in before we leave. So you can decide if that's now or after Leslie.
[Alyssa Black (Chair)]: Go ahead, my question is about, is there an actual loss to the general fund that appropriation is gonna be worth of the 0.8%?
[Nolan Langweil (Joint Fiscal Office)]: No, because first of all, it's a recommendation.
[Alyssa Black (Chair)]: Well, let's say it passed or whatever.
[Nolan Langweil (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Then it would be part of the budget contract of, would you increase, you wouldn't be taking any money away from the The current question is, would you increase the tax further in lieu of how the insurance companies are already paying Blueprint?
[Alyssa Black (Chair)]: And the impact on the general, maybe look at just the whole
[Nolan Langweil (Joint Fiscal Office)]: It wouldn't impact the general fund, except unless of course the money went to the, That would be a question about, if you increase the tax, where did the money go?
[Alyssa Black (Chair)]: Yeah, yeah. Does it go
[Nolan Langweil (Joint Fiscal Office)]: general fund, does go to special fund, does pay somebody's salary?
[Alyssa Black (Chair)]: Would you reallocate your percents?
[Nolan Langweil (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Would change the percentage.
[Jennifer Carbee (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah, that's what our executives have to look at as modifications to the tax rate. Okay.
[Alyssa Black (Chair)]: These percent. I'm looking at these percent. So okay.
[Nolan Langweil (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Yeah. Would increase. Yeah.
[Alyssa Black (Chair)]: It's just having them look at potentially funding the blueprint through a claims tax, which all insurers pay a claims tax, as opposed to now all payers, not all payers, some payers pay into the blueprint. So it's And there was this report and they have recommendations in that report from 2023 Act 51 around this, because we have had them look at this before. Alright. Any oh, Brian, do you wanna ask your last we do have to get to the floor. They don't schedule five minutes from this.
[Brian Cina (Member)]: Yeah, just that if we're already asking the Agency of Human Services to do this, why not add something and ask them to also tell us how the claims tax might support public financing of universal primary care. It's like they would just be taking the same set of numbers that they're looking at and calculate another number, and it could be in the same report.
[Jennifer Carbee (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: They would need to know the cost of universal primary care, means it would need to be developed before they could cost out what the tax, claims tax rates would be required would be. So they couldn't just- Can
[Nolan Langweil (Joint Fiscal Office)]: I make a statement? Yes. If you were going to be financing the universal primary care system, they'd want a separate finance, so that it looks at all the things, not just claims tax. So that specialized in just finding claims tax, it might be one of many different bunny methods, so you wouldn't want to do the isolation of anything else.
[Alyssa Black (Chair)]: I think that would be like step 87 of universal primary care. Yeah, we
[Brian Cina (Member)]: ask them to provide the formula that they use for calculating what can be generated from the claim? I guess we could do that without them.
[Alyssa Black (Chair)]: Ledging council has to go. I will just say this amendment is being offered by two representatives and it's not up to us to amend somebody else's amendment.
[Brian Cina (Member)]: Yeah, we'd have to amend it after.
[Alyssa Black (Chair)]: I am recommending that considering that this bill may be on the floor in the next couple hours that we not further complicate things. That's my recommendation. I like it.
[Jennifer Carbee (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Thank you, Nolan, for pointing yourselves.
[Alyssa Black (Chair)]: Thank you. For having that so honest, I'll ask for this amendment. Please raise your hand. Eleven-zero-zero. Thank you. Right? They did. They did work. Another member decides
[Brian Cina (Member)]: to amend the bill, though, we would have to come
[Nolan Langweil (Joint Fiscal Office)]: back here and discuss it.
[Alyssa Black (Chair)]: Yes. Don't. Alright. Is that your plan? Well,
[Brian Cina (Member)]: I'm gonna let people know about this.