 |
||||||||
 |
|
|||||||
|
||||||||
|
 |
A fractured logic for broken system
© St. Petersburg Times Our friends in the state Legislature are worried that not enough people in Florida have health insurance. This is a good thing to worry about. One big reason, they say, is that not enough employers can even afford to offer insurance to their workers. That's perfectly true. However, our lawmakers have come up with an answer that, to a lot of critics, seems backward. Their answer is: Let's make insurance cheaper by cutting out some of the things that insurance has to pay for! The theory is that if insurance companies don't have to cover your kid's cleft palate, or pay for mammograms, or extended maternity care and so forth, they can charge lower premiums. More employers could buy it. You know what? I bet that's true. For that matter, if we said that insurance companies didn't have to pay for anything at all, then they could charge us REALLY low premiums! House Bill 913, sponsored by our own Rep. Frank Farkas, R-St. Petersburg, is awaiting a vote in the full House. Senate Bill 1286 is still making its way through committees. (You might remember Farkas from a few weeks ago, when citizens came to Tallahassee from all over the state to testify against his bill. Farkas' committee allowed only insurance lobbyists to speak, then rammed the bill through and adjourned the meeting.) Farkas's argument is: Something is better than nothing, isn't it? At least more working people would have a shot at getting insurance with these "mini" policies. What could be wrong with that? First: A lot of people are going to get a shock when they find out what their insurance DOESN'T cover. They will go through life believing they have "health insurance," until they file a claim and realize too late. You might be thinking: Shouldn't they know what their policy covers? Yes -- if they are told. But here is an interesting fact: The insurance lobbyists in Tallahassee are fighting to make sure there is NO such disclosure required under this law. Second: A typical feature of such policies is that they carry a low lifetime or annual limit -- $10,000 a year in one proposal, $25,000 for an entire lifetime in another. A medium-sized event could gobble up your entire coverage. Third: Is something always better than nothing? Not necessarily. Employees will be under strong pressure to take their employer's health plan, even if it's lousy coverage, instead of seeking their coverage elsewhere. Presumably, the coverage will cost employers something -- money that then can't be used as salaries, which means employees will have even that much less money available to make their own market choices. I've talked to insurance agents, consumer advocates and other opponents of these bills. Several of them propose a different solution. Most people are not as worried about the little stuff. But they want to know that if they have a heart attack, or get cancer, or have a kid with a major problem, that their insurance will be there for them. So if we really need to monkey with insurance coverage to make it more affordable, the model that these opponents support is to offer major-medical coverage, catastrophic coverage, with an extremely high deductible -- even $5,000, $10,000 a year. Policy holders would be able to "buy" a lower deductible by additional premiums. But overall, coverage would be much more affordable. The insurance lobby in Tallahassee is powerfully lined up behind its bills. If the bills are defeated, it will only be because they got tangled up with other horsetrading. If they pass, then down the road we will be subjected to a string of sob stories from people denied coverage who will cry out, "I didn't know, I didn't know." If enough people get mad, then legislators will huff and puff that Something Must Be Done. On that day, I hope there will be someone there to remind everyone that it was this Legislature, in the year 2002, that voted for this idea in the first place. -- You can reach Howard Troxler at (727) 893-8505 or at troxler@sptimes.com.
 © 2006 • All Rights Reserved • St. Petersburg Times
490 First Avenue South • St. Petersburg, FL 33701 • 727-893-8111 
|
|
Times columns today Howard Troxler Jan Glidewell Ernest Hooper Robert Trigaux From the Times Metro desk |
