TRENTON – Senate President Steve Sweeney (D-Gloucester/Salem/Cumberland) issued the following statement today regarding the interim report of the Governor’s Health Benefits Quality and Value Task Force:
“I was pleased to see the Governor’s Task Force recommend reforms regarding the procurement of a Third Party Administrator for claims adjudication.
“Creating an effective Third Party Administrator with the ability to provide real-time auditing of health insurance claims was a key recommendation of our bipartisan Economic and Fiscal Policy Task Force this summer.
“Like the Pharmacy Benefits Manager program we created in 2016 to provide real-time auditing of pharmaceutical bills, this program promises to save hundreds of millions of dollars for state, county and municipal governments, as well as school districts, for their employees and for taxpayers.
“I was also pleased to see the task force commit to the expansion of Patient-Centered Medical Homes, which were a joint initiative we worked on with the public employee unions to improve health care quality and save money by giving employees their own family doctor. Obtaining access to detailed health care claims data will enable us to expand this important option.
“These recommendations will provide significant healthcare savings and are an important first step as we begin to address the multi-billion-dollar fiscal crisis laid out in our Economic and Fiscal Policy Workgroup report in August.”