Health-insurance rates grab attention
By Bruce Pringle
Coast Press Reporter
UNHEALTHY PRICES?
The cost of health care leads to efforts to provide adequate, affordable insurance to more Delaware residents. Lloyd Mills, who has spent years studying the high cost of medical care, says there is at least one benefit of rising health-insurance prices: They keep people focused on trying to make those prices lower.
So far, the effort has paid few dividends. Insurance premiums continue to rise yearly by double-digit percentages.
“What’s encouraging is we have a lot of initiatives on the table,” said Mills, of Lewes, president of Delaware Small Business Health Care Coalition.
* Last week, state Rep. Joe Booth, R-Georgetown, formally reintroduced his proposal to allow businesses with fewer than 1,000 employees to obtain insurance coverage through the health-care plan for Delaware state workers. House Bill 66 is essentially the same as a proposal that stalled last year amid complaints that it would be too costly for the state to administer.
* In February, state Insurance Commissioner Matt Denn announced that a group of legislators, business and medical leaders and others were meeting to propose legislation to enable businesses to form an insurance purchasing pool. The pool would buy insurance for its members much as governments and huge corporations do for their employees.
* On Tuesday, a statewide committee was to resume discussion of how to make affordable health care available to every Delaware resident, possibly through a government-run “single-payer” system like those in Canada and much of Europe.
* And around April 1 a new, nonprofit, Sussex County-based player in the health-insurance field, First Healthy Choices, is to begin offering local chamber-of-commerce members coverage in which rates would be lower for people who follow their doctors’ orders. The cost of that coverage has yet to be announced.
Meanwhile, Mills said, many businesses and individuals are trying to cut costs by opting for policies that can require a patient stricken by a major illness or injury to pay up to $10,000 annually toward his own medical care.
“Moderate-income people don’t have the wherewithal to come up with $5,000 or $10,000,” he said.
A recent Harvard University study found that medical bills are the most common reason people file for bankruptcy. More than half the people surveyed cited a major family illness or injury as the reason they went into debt. Of those who blamed medical bills for their bankruptcies, more than 70 percent said they had health insurance.
“They think they’re safe,” Mills said of workers whose coverage proves insufficient when catastrophe strikes. “That’s the crime of it.”
BOOTH VS. DENN?
Booth said 270,000 people in private industry potentially could benefit from his bill. But he admits he’s in for a hard fight.
“My proposal was derailed (in 2004) by the threat that it would cost the state some money,” he said.
Critics of his plan say it could drive up the state’s health-insurance cost if private workers need more medical care than state employees. In addition, the state would bear the cost of serving as the go-between for insurers and private employers.
“The bottom line, I think, is (H.B. 66) will be amended to chop away at cost,” Booth said, predicting that other legislators will eliminate larger companies from potential eligibility to participate. Even with that change, he conceded, he will have to combat charges that the state would be overburdened by administrative costs.
Booth’s bill may be in competition with one crafted by the group backed by Denn, the insurance commissioner. The group is to present a formal proposal during the General Assembly’s current session, which runs through June 2006.
Attempts to reach Denn for comment were unavailing.
A third proposal for health-insurance reform in Delaware could promote a single-payer proposal to ensure health care for virtually every resident. It would place the state in the role now played by insurance companies. While the system might raise state expenses, its advocates say, it would reduce overall health-care costs by reducing paperwork and inefficiency.
Such a proposal was sponsored last year by state Rep. Dennis Williams, D-Wilmington. He wasn’t available to discuss whether he will introduce a similar bill.
While the General Assembly considers possible long-term, statewide health-insurance reform, a local initiative could result in a new line of coverage within the next several weeks. First Healthy Choices, a fledgling nonprofit that has attracted the attention of the Rehoboth Beach-Dewey Beach Chamber of Commerce, is to unveil its complete program soon, according to the chamber’s executive director, Carol Everhart.
Among the program’s unusual features will be a rate structure in which an individual would pay more if he failed to heed a doctor’s advice to, for instance, avoid gaining weight.
This article contains material from Gannett News Service.
* E-mail Bruce Pringle at bxpringle@gannett.com.
Originally published Wednesday, March 9, 2005