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State paid family and medical leave: administration, enrollment and budget implications discussed
Summary
Officials described the voluntary employer market the state-created program is built to support, the MetLife contract that runs through 2027, current enrollment levels for the individual plan and state-employee coverage, and the limited savings from eliminating the marketing and outreach lines.
Agency staff and the Department of Administrative Services outlined how New Hampshire's voluntary paid family and medical leave (PFML) program is administered and how removing the state-employee benefit would affect the private market and the state's contract with MetLife.
Cassie (senior staff in DAS) and other department officials said the PFML program was established by statute to create a private market for paid leave by offering state employees coverage and thereby attracting a carrier that would offer voluntary plans to employers and individuals. "The structure of the program is... to provide a paid-family leave benefit to all state employees that will... create a market for a carrier to come in," staff explained.
The state pays a small premium for the state-employee coverage — roughly 0.207% of covered payroll — which translated to about $1.45 million in total funds for fiscal 2024 and roughly $550,000 in general funds, officials said. Enrollment figures provided at the hearing showed about 8,900 state-covered employees, about 1,800 individual-plan enrollees and roughly 308 private employers purchasing coverage for their workers (covering about 13,374 employees in the voluntary employer pool).
Cassie and DAS staff warned lawmakers that removing the state's employee premium would likely collapse the private-market voluntary product because MetLife's participation and the market's viability depend on the state pool making the contract financially sustainable. "If you eliminate the state employee benefit, my personal opinion is the whole thing will die," an agency official said.
Lawmakers also asked whether the state could provide only direct payments to the small number of state employees who end up claiming benefits rather than supporting the full market. Officials said that is legally and administratively possible but would change the program's purpose — which had been designed to stimulate a private-market voluntary plan with minimal state administrative overhead. The current MetLife contract runs through December 31, 2027, with two optional one-year extensions, officials said.
Ending: Staff offered to return with more detailed claims and payout figures and noted the outreach/marketing and contractor costs for the state's administrative role are modest relative to the overall question of whether to keep the state-employee benefit in place.
