Despite a record setting budget surplus, the 2022 session ended without the Legislature enacting a tax, bonding or many of the other major spending bills that were being negotiated between the DFL House and the Republican Senate. 

While some are frustrated with this outcome, others are applauding the resulting fiscal restraint and believe that the proposed historic tax relief simply wasn’t worth the $4 billion in additional government spending that was included in other budget bills such as education, public safety and health and human services. 

Whether the Legislature comes back into a special session to complete work on those bills is still uncertain. Nursing homes, cities, construction trades and other groups that would have benefited from the bonding and spending bills are pushing for the Legislature to keep working. However, if the Legislature does not return in 2022, almost all of the unspent funds would remain for the party that prevails in the November election— a very tempting proposition.

The Legislature did, however, take action on two of the Big I’s key priorities for the 2022 Session, protecting the private health insurance market by extending the health insurance reinsurance program and stopping the significant UI tax increases on all MN employers. Thanks again to all of you who helped support our lobbying efforts! 

Despite the deadlock on the bigger budget issues, the Big I was also able to enact significant legislation to modernize MN’s anti-rebating and affinity group laws. Working closely with both the House and Senate Commerce Committee Chairs, the DOC and the insurance companies (IFM), HF 3255 was sent to the Governor’s desk late on the last night of the Session. 

In addition, the Big I once again fought and succeeded in heading off the numerous attempts by the House to socialize the business of insurance through state-run programs often funded by the taxpayers. These attempts included a government take-over of the health insurance, disability income (PFML), long-term care (WA Cares) and retirement plan (Secure Choice) markets.

For years, Big I members have expressed frustration with MN’s antiquated anti-rebating laws, especially as those laws apply to sweepstakes, raffles and other marketing tools. Teaming up with the Insurance Federation of MN, whose member companies want to offer consumers "value-add" items or services not listed in the policy, we successfully enacted a modified version of the NAIC’s recently revised anti-rebating model language. 

The new anti-rebating provisions do the following:

The DOC has been interpreting existing law in a manner that has required many insurers to eliminate their affinity discount programs. We are hopeful that the revisions we made in HF 3255 will allow companies to reinstate their affinity group discounts and will provide more opportunities for consumers to save on their homeowners and auto insurance. 

The DOC invited the Big I to participate in a group of CE stakeholders to begin a process of modernizing the CE statutes. This first round of reforms was largely focused on the provider/coordinator’s experience and not the end user. 

The Big I proposed additional changes to the DOC that would improve the licensee’s experience, such as reducing the number of polling questions and authorizing partial course credit if a licensee were unable to complete the course. Since our proposals do not require a legislative change, we placed them on a back-burner until the conclusion of the legislative session. We will be refocusing the DOC’s attention on those issues over the summer to continue to try and improve the CE experience for our members.

While there were the usual array of bills introduced to enact coverage or underwriting restrictions, none passed in the property and casualty arena during the 2022 session.

This years’ introductions included bills that would have prohibited insurers from discriminating against certain dog breeds and required rental insurance to cover building damage.

The only workers’ compensation legislation enacted this session was the extension of the rebuttable Covid presumption for front-line workers. The original presumption, which was enacted in 2020, sunset on December 31, 2021 and a bill was introduced on the first day of session to extend the presumption to May 2023. The legislation also took the unusual and likely unconstitutional step of applying the presumption retroactively to workers who contracted COVID after the sunset.

Partnering with the business community and insurers, the Big I lobbied against the retroactive effective date as well as to urge legislators to respect the integrity of the workers’ compensation product and the time-honored Worker’s Compensation Advisory Council Process. As previously reported, the resulting bill extended the effective date to January 13, 2023, with no retroactive coverage. We can expect this conversation to continue in 2023.

The Tax Chairs agreed upon a $4 billion tax bill, but it was never brought to the Floor of either body. The House, where tax bills must originate, refused to bring up the tax bill unless and until there were agreements on the outstanding budget bills including public safety and education. The agreed to tax bill included:

As with the tax bill, the House and Senate agreed to a Jobs bill, but it was never brought to the House or Senate floor. Importantly, the agreed-to bill did not include the sweeping, state-run PFML proposal that was included in the House bill, a proposal that was strongly opposed by the Big I.

As an aside, the Senate passed a bill that would have authorized insurers to write and producers to sell paid family leave insurance—an insurance line that is not currently authorized in Minnesota. The House did not take action on the Senate’s proposal.

While the House and Senate were unable to agree on an HHS funding bill, they did pass a policy bill. The policy bill did not contain the House’s proposal to create a Minnesota Care buy-in or the government run health care study—initiatives that were strongly opposed by the Big I.

Given the trajectory of the last three years, it’s hard to predict what threats we might be facing in 2023. What we do know is that there will be a record-setting, minimum of 59 new state legislators, which is over a quarter of the Legislature. Control of the Legislature will be up for grabs and the Governor, and the other state-wide officers are all on the ballot as well.

With respect to issues, you can expect the interest in socializing insurance to continue. In addition, the recent bout of severe weather is highlighting the cost of homeowners and commercial dwelling insurance in Minnesota and coverage issues are sure to follow. Whatever threats come our way, you can rest assured that Big I will be ready to protect your clients and the industry. 

Please contact Dan, April and I about how you can get involved! 

Capitol Notes an exclusive Big I MN member benefit. We will be moving historical Capital Notes emails to a member only section on our bigimn.org website. You will need to use your login credentials to view historical Capital Notes emails.