Ohio Public Employees Retirement System's New HRA - Prepare for the Effects on your District

Date: 10/01/2021, 10:00 a.m.

Location: Online

Fee: Free

Beginning Jan. 1, 2022, the Ohio Public Employees Retirement System (OPERS) will no longer offer a group medical & Rx plan. OPERS will instead provide a comprehensive Health Reimbursement Arrangement (HRA) for the retiree to be reimbursed for qualified medical expenses and post-taxed medical plan premiums for both the retiree & dependents. Employees bringing their spouse onto their coverage will need for their premiums to be post-taxed for reimbursement.  Also, even if the spouse is not added to your district’s coverage, your employee (nor the district) will be able to contribute to an HSA starting Jan. 1 due to IRS regulations.   

Please join us as we go over:
• Section 125 compliance including the requirements if the district chooses to deny post-taxing premiums.
• Can the employee move from pre to post-tax premiums at any time of your plan year?  
• Items employees may need from you to get reimbursed
• Alternatives to HSAs including FSAs & HRAs

The OPERS issue is relevant if any of your employees are MARRIED to an OPERS retiree as OPERS is no longer providing health insurance, but instead providing an HRA so the retiree can get reimbursed for other coverage.  This means for our schools:

1) OPERS Retirees will likely be coming on the school insurance, but in order to get reimbursed OPERS says the premium needs to be “Post-Taxed." Therefore, your employees will need to sign their election form indicating this. Some questions received on this include:

• What if we have a July 1 plan year--can the employee still move their premium to post-tax?
• What if the employee doesn’t ask and then come Feb. 1, 2022 they want to move it, can we do that?
• What if we do not want to allow them to post-tax premium, are we allowed to mandate it be pre-taxed?  If so, how?
• What will OPERS require to prove the retiree is covered and that the premium is post-taxed?
• Can the OPERS retiree just use the HRA for other items and not for insurance premiums?

2) If the school employee has an HSA, then even if the retiree does not come on their school insurance, the employee nor their district can continue contributing to the HSA as of Jan. 1, 2022. This causes these questions

• We have a bargaining agreement as a district to put money into the HSA, what do we do now?  
• Can the employee have an FSA?
• Can we as a district start an HRA to replace the HSA?

Since OPERS retirees are state, local, prison, county retirees, and more, it is quite certain to affect your district soon if not in 2022.