Health Insurance Showdown
- From: "Jim Higgins" <gordian238@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 9 May 2006 13:04:59 -0400
Health Insurance Showdown
May 9, 2006; Page A18
When Ron Pollack of Families USA starts screaming, Republicans must be doing
something right about health care. And so they finally are.
As early as today the Senate will vote to prevent a Democratic filibuster of
legislation that would make it easier and cheaper for small businesses and
their employees to buy health insurance. The House has already passed
similar legislation, and today's vote is the GOP's best hope to do something
significant about health-care affordability before November -- and
potentially for years to come.
The bill at hand, sponsored by Wyoming's Mike Enzi, concerns so-called Small
Business Health Plans, often referred to as Association Health Plans. The
idea is that if small businesses are allowed to band together on a
nationwide scale, they'll have greater leverage when negotiating prices with
insurers. The bill would let them bypass many of the state insurance rules
that make coverage so expensive. By creating a larger and freer market for
health insurance, the Enzi bill would increase the number of people who have
it.
And that's exactly what such government-run health care advocates as Mr.
Pollack -- and Connecticut Democrat Chris Dodd, who joined him yesterday to
denounce the bill -- don't like. Some provider groups are also opposed for
nakedly self-interested reasons, since it would allow plans to bypass state
regulations mandating coverage for, say, chiropractors.
Their claims that the Enzi bill would allow for worthless policies and
fly-by-night insurers are unfounded. Big companies are already exempt from
state insurance mandates under a federal law known as Erisa, and they
haven't engaged in some "race to the bottom" for their employee coverage.
Why should small companies do so? The owners who participate in these
association plans would be buying the same insurance for themselves -- which
is reason enough to doubt that all they want is skinflint coverage.
If anything, the Enzi bill's flaw is that it doesn't deregulate the
small-business insurance market enough. The plans would cover all major
medical expenses, as they should. But while insurers could offer
chiropractor-free plans, they would also have to offer the option of a plan
equal to one offered state employees in one of the five most populous
states. State employee plans -- paid for by taxpayers -- tend to offer an
expensive set of benefits beyond what even the worst-regulated states
require via mandates. The Enzi bill would also create a new national
insurance regulation board to oversee the plans. This sounds innocuous as
currently described, but the tendency of these things over time is to become
monsters.
A better approach is being offered by Arizona's John Shadegg in the House
and South Carolina's Jim DeMint in the Senate. Their legislation would allow
not just small businesses but individuals to buy health insurance across
state lines, with those policies regulated by the states from which they are
sold. That's the way banking now works. What we really should be aiming for
is a national market of portable, individually owned policies that can be
bought from many insurers, including over the Internet.
Let's hope Republicans recognize the stakes in today's vote. They badly need
something to show voters this fall other than record levels of pork-barrel
spending, and making health care more affordable will resonate with
Americans everywhere. As for the White House, we hope it's as prepared to
twist arms for this reform as it was a few years back for the Medicare
prescription drug entitlement. A vibrant national health insurance market
would be partial absolution for that expensive new burden on taxpayers.
--
"If you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without
bloodshed,if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not
too costly,you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with
all the odds against you and only a small chance of survival.There may
even be a worse case;you may have to fight when there is no hope of
victory,because it is better to perish than to live as slaves."
---Winston Churchill
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