Delaware
Report: Keep Medicfill for state retirees
A subcommittee tasked with reviewing healthcare plans for retired state employees recently recommended keeping the Medicfill plan for current retirees, and making other changes for state employees hired after Jan. 1, 2025.
“We created a process to make sure retirees’ voices were heard,” said Lt. Gov. Bethany Hall-Long, who chairs the Retiree Healthcare Benefits Advisory Subcommittee, speaking during a joint House and Senate session Feb. 19 at Legislative Hall.
The issue of retiree healthcare benefits arose in 2022 after a group of state retirees expressed outrage over plans to switch retiree healthcare benefits to Medicare Advantage. Retirees formed an opposition group, RISE Delaware, and challenged the state’s decision in court. The case ended up in Delaware Supreme Court, which upheld traditional benefits for retirees.
Hall-Long assured retirees that the state will not request nor consider Medicare Advantage moving forward.
“Our retirees do not want Medicare Advantage, and I concur,” she said.
Still, funding retiree benefits is an ongoing and ever-increasing expense the subcommittee is seeking to remedy through its 25-page report of recommendations to the General Assembly, which will have to legislate changes.
Any changes, however, are recommended for state employees hired on or after Jan. 1, 2025. Retiree benefits would be grandfathered in for current state employees, Hall-Long said.
“The last thing we want is a mass exodus,” Hall-Long said about employees potentially retiring early to take advantage of current benefits. “We do not want employees leaving.”
For employees hired after the January 2025 date, the report proposes two retiree plans – a Medicare Supplement Plan similar to the Medigap G plan available in 2023 with a retiree/state premium split for a 25-plus-year retiree of 5%/95% and a Medicare Supplement Plan similar to the Medigap L plan available in 2023 with a retiree/state premium split for a 25-plus-year retiree of 5%/95%.
For eligible pensioners hired after the 2025 cutoff, the report proposes the state pay no benefits for anyone with fewer than 15 years of service, 50% of benefits for 15 to 20 years, 75% for 20 to 25 years, and 100% for 25 years or more.
To help pay for ongoing costs, the report proposes setting aside at least 1% of the previous state budget to put money in the Other Post-Employment Benefits Fund with additional one-time contributions to the OPEB fund when one-time revenues or surpluses permit. Payroll deductions could also be increased to 0.50% of payroll with additional 0.25% increases each fiscal year, under the proposal.
Several RISE members thanked the subcommittee for its work and supported the proposal.
Speaking during public comment, resident Steven LePage said healthcare prices in Delaware are inflated because of the lack of competition among healthcare facilities. He noted a Delaware process that requires a certificate of need before a healthcare provider can provide services – a process that effectively allows hospitals and healthcare systems to have a monopoly.
“The pricing of healthcare in Delaware is too high,” he said. “This concerns certificate of need law. Twelve states have done away with their certificate of need, and I think Delaware needs to do the same to allow more competition to come to Delaware. Once the healthcare pricing for all of Delaware gets addressed, that will lower the pressure on state retiree healthcare as well.”
Thomas Jefferson University is opening a regional campus of its Sidney Kimmel Medical College in Delaware, an effort that will result in the state’s first medical school.
Jefferson beat out three other bidders to establish the four-year program in partnership with the state. The other bidders were the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine, the consulting firm PriceWaterhouseCoopers and Ponce Health Sciences University in Puerto Rico, Spotlight Delaware reported.
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The inaugural class of 40 medical students will begin instruction in July 2028. Initially, the campus will be based at the University of Delaware in Newark, with Jefferson faculty providing instruction. A permanent home for the campus is still being finalized, the Inquirer reported.
The medical students will receive 18 months of preclinical training on campus before receiving clinical training from healthcare providers in Delaware’s southern counties, where the state’s physician shortage is most deeply felt. That shortage is compounded by an aging population, Delaware officials said.
“Jefferson is committed to being part of the solution to Delaware’s physician shortage,” Jefferson CEO Dr. Joseph Cacchione said in a statement. “We are proud to help build a future where every Delawarean has access to the care they deserve. Jefferson is all in.”
The school’s creation is being supported by $157.4 million from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
Delaware is one of three states without a Doctor of Medicine or Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine program. Since the late 1960s, Jefferson and the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine have reserved seats for Delaware students.
“Sidney Kimmel Medical College has trained generations of physicians for more than 200 years, more than any other medical college in the country,” Said Ibrahim, dean of Sidney Kimmel Medical College, said in a statement. “It is a privilege to bring our mission to Delaware’s patients and communities.”
Jefferson has announced several expansions recently. The university is establishing a full-time doctor of nursing practice-nurse anesthesia program and several online graduate programs at the Lehigh Valley Health Network Center for Healthcare Education in Lehigh County. It also is opening a satellite respiratory therapy lab at Lehigh Valley Hospital-Cedar Crest in Allentown.
Delaware officials said medical students will start their classroom instruction at UD and then do their clinical training at offices and health care systems in Kent and Sussex counties, where the shortage of doctors is most acute.
However, ChristianaCare, which has its own partnership with Jefferson, is not participating. The state’s largest health care system was part of Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine’s unsuccessful bid to operate the school. In a joint statement from ChristianaCare and PCOM, the two organizations expressed disappointment with not being part of the consortium of higher education institutions and healthcare organizations.
“The path forward raises genuine questions about whether the school’s goals can be fully realized without ChristianaCare’s meaningful participation in its clinical training mission,” it said. “The success of any four-year medical program depends not just on an academic institution, but on a true and committed partnership with its clinical partners — one built on shared mission, mutual investment and trust developed over time.”
Students in the first class can get their tuition subsidized, covering all of their education costs, in exchange for an agreement to work in rural Delaware for five years.
Running the medical school is expected to cost Jefferson $78 million over the next five years. The money is from a federal rural health grant through the Rural Health Transformation Program, which congressional Republicans created in the so-called “One Big, Beautiful Bill Act.”
The program will give $50 billion to every state over five years, though exactly the total each will eventually receive is unclear. Half of the money is to be distributed equally to states and the other half is awarded by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services based on a variety of factors.
The state applied for $1 billion late last year to improve health care in Kent and Sussex counties. The Trump administration has so far allocated Delaware $157 million. Delaware is expected to receive at least $500 million over the life of the fund.
Delaware Ohio Housing Growth
A look at the rapid expansion of housing developments in Delaware, Ohio.
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Every few weeks Delaware city approves a new housing development. The city has more than 4,000 housing units in its development pipeline, contributing to the rapid growth in one of the fastest-growing counties in Ohio.
A crash shut down U.S. 42 in Delaware County in both directions June 2.
As of 7 a.m., U.S. 42 was closed from U.S. 23 to Jegs Place near the Delaware Municipal Airport.
It was not immediately clear whether anyone was injured in the crash or when the roadway would open.
This is a developing story and will be updated
Public Safety and Breaking News Reporter Bailey Gallion can be reached at bagallion@dispatch.com.
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