Extends group health insurance coverage for small employers to include self-employed individuals with no employees or small businesses with part-time employees.

A BILL FOR AN ACT

SECTION 1. Section 431:2-201.5, Hawaii Revised Statutes, is amended by amending subsection (b) to read as follows:

"(b) The following definitions shall be used when applying Title 42 United States Code section 300gg, et seq.:

"Employee" means [an employee who works on a full-time basis with a normal workweek of twenty hours or more.] any individual employed by an employer, whether the individual works full-time or part-time, including a self-employed individual.

"Group health issuer" means all persons offering health insurance coverage to any group or association, but shall not include those persons offering benefits exempted from Title I of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, P.L. 104-191 under sections 732(c) and 733(c) of Title I of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 and sections 2747 and 2791(c) of the Public Health Service Act.

"Self-employed individual" means a person operating the person's own business, whether as a sole proprietorship or in any other legally recognized manner that a person may operate the person's own business, and who has a general excise tax license for that business.

"Small employer" means an employer who employs between one and no more than fifty employees[.], and includes a self-employed individual."

SECTION 2. Statutory material to be repealed is bracketed and stricken. New statutory material is underscored.

SECTION 3. This Act shall take effect on July 1, 2006.