The Ledger
June 15, 2004
Gov. Bush Signs Health Insurance Bill
By Brendan Farrington
Gov. Jeb Bush signed a wide-ranging bill Monday designed to lower the cost of health insurance and reverse the growing number of Floridians without health care coverage.
The heart of the bill (Rep. Frank) Farkas sponsored attempts to create less expensive options for health care coverage.
One provision seeks to lower premiums by requiring insurers to make high deductible plans available to small employers.
Those plans would be linked to health savings accounts, which work similarly to Individual Retirement Accounts.
Another provision expands the experimental Health Flex program that permits insurers, health maintenance organizations, local governments and other entities to offer stripped-down insurance coverage to low-income people.
Health insurance companies often cite a list of more than 50 benefits they’re required to cover — from maternity care to tests for certain types of cancer — as a big reason insurance costs so much.
Low-income Floridians can now be offered a plan that doesn’t have much of the required coverage.
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Comment: These policies are designed to increase the numbers of individuals who are insured. But the crucial tradeoff is that they threaten the financial security of many of those who already have insurance. The reductions in benefits and increases in patient cost sharing will
exceed the ability for many moderate and low income individuals to pay for essential medical services. The net impact is clearly a negative since a much greater number of individuals will face both significant medical debt and
impaired access due to lack of affordability.
These efforts to increase coverage by decreasing the value of plans have failed anyway. The numbers of uninsured continue to increase.
We need new policies that begin with the principle that everyone will have coverage automatically. Then we can work on policies that will enable the most effective allocation of our generous health care resources.