WA State's Consolidated Healthcare Purchasing System - What Districts Need to Know

In June 2017, the Washington State Legislature passed Engrossed House Bill 2242 (EHB 2242) with strong bipartisan support. EHB 2242 contains a provision that created a School Employees’ Benefits Board (SEBB) under the Health Care Authority (HCA) to establish a consolidated healthcare purchasing system for public employees.

SEBB will design and approve state-wide insurance benefit plans and eligibility criteria for school employees, from K-12 school teachers and classroom aides, to part-time bus drivers and lunchroom workers. The SEBB Program will replace the coverage currently provided by local school districts. Benefits (including the share of premiums that the state and workers’ pay) will be bargained statewide in 2018, replacing collective bargaining at the district level. Starting January 1, 2020, all school employees will select their health insurance plans through a single state-run exchange (the SEBB Program).

In 2017, HCA requested health plan data from all districts. In 2018, and in future years, districts must continue to provide data about coverages, rates, experience histories, etc., to the HCA.

At the request of the WSIPC Executive Board, WSIPC worked directly with HCA to provide the necessary data. This was done to minimize the workload to our local districts. In 2017, WSIPC constructed and scripted the queries to pull the data, a task that took about 75 hours of programming. The dataset consisted of benefit and health plan details about types of coverage, carriers, and whether or not plans were actively used when offered. Employment characteristics such as FTE hours, workdays, and job duties, were also provided for additional analysis.

A benefit of being served by the Cooperative is that we can use our centralized resources so our districts are asked to do less when it comes to collecting and sharing data. WSIPC will continue to work with HCA to assist them in gathering data that will help meet the SEBB requirements for 2018 and beyond, so our districts can focus on educating their students.

Sections 801 through 815 of EHB 2242 provide details about SEBB duties, and outline requirements of the SEBB Program. You can also find answers to Frequently Asked Questions on the HCA website.