HARRISBURG - Consolidating school health care plans can bring benefits and its own set of challenges, two school officials in Lackawanna County told lawmakers last week.

Michael Mahon, Ph.D., superintendent of Abington Heights School District and Brian Rinaldi, business manager of Old Forge School District, testified about coping with paying increasing health care costs for their district employees.They appeared at a House Democratic Policy Committee hearing on proposals to have a statewide health care plan or a half-dozen regional plans replace various plans for nearly 190,000 school district employees in Pennsylvania.Rep. Sid Michaels Kavulich, D-Taylor, is the main Democratic co-sponsor of a bill to create a statewide board to study the cost-effectiveness of a statewide plan, regional plans or consolidating selective areas of coverage such as prescriptions.Creating a statewide plan could yield estimated savings of more than $200 million annually by 2020, according to a study released last year by the Legislative Budget and Finance Committee.Kavulich said the testimony at the hearing is prompting supporters to focus more on a regional plan approach such as Ohio uses.Abington Heights and Old Forge are neighboring districts, but they handle health coverage differently.Old Forge belongs to a health care consortium with eight other districts organized by Northeast Intermediate Unit 19, Rinaldi said. The consortium has enabled Old Forge to design its own benefits to suit its employees and budget, increase its purchasing power and share risks, resulting in the district keeping health care cost increases under an average 6 percent during the last five years, he added."While providing high quality health care benefits to school employees is necessary to attract and retain the best and brightest, it is becoming increasingly difficult to manage this expense within the constraints of a school district budget," Rinaldi said. "In a district like Old Forge, where 70 percent of revenue is derived from local sources, this increased burden is usually placed on the taxpayer."Rinaldi said having regional health plans would make more sense than a statewide plan given the differences in the way health coverage is provided in urban and rural areas. He said significant cost savings could be realized through a state-run prescription drug program for school districts.Abington Heights hasn't joined a consortium, choosing instead to self-fund its own health care plan, Mahon said. A key reason is that the district's insurance uses rates are lower than those for districts in consortia.