nationalhealthquotes.com

March 29, 2008
Daytona Beach Florida
Across the nation, millions of Americans struggle with the distressing reality of life without health insurance. Florida is no different: In our state, almost one in five individuals lacks health insurance. While there are several reasons why people may not have coverage, 69 percent of uninsured Floridians say they do not have insurance because their employers do not offer it.

A just-released study by Families USA, a nonpartisan health-care advocacy organization, underscores the magnitude of the problem we are dealing with: According to the report, more than six people die in Florida every day for lack of health-care coverage.

While there are several different paths for expanding health-care coverage to the uninsured in our state, I believe the most sensible way would be to make it easier for small companies to offer their employees coverage.

Offering health insurance through the workplace is an excellent way to provide coverage. However, there are few options for our citizens whose employers don’t offer coverage, especially if they make too much to be eligible for government programs but too little to afford an individual health insurance policy. The average cost of health insurance in the United States has increased by 87 percent since 2000, with the average health-care policy now costing $12,000 a year. This leaves millions of Floridians unable to afford individual plans outside of the workplace.

From listening to small business owners throughout our area, I know that cost is a major concern when deciding to offer coverage to their employees. In Volusia County alone, there are 3,979 small businesses that employ between two and five employees. At businesses with fewer than five employees on the payroll, 36 percent of workers are uninsured. When even some of our small business owners cannot afford their own health insurance, offering coverage to employees is just not an option.

To help small businesses give more Floridians the opportunity to have health insurance, I am proposing legislation during this legislative session that would create the Small Business Health Care Insurance Assistance Pilot Program. This citizen-driven bill is the product of recommendations made by a local citizen advisory committee convened for this purpose. The pilot program will offer a one-time rebate of $1,000 per employee to small businesses that help in providing coverage for their employees.

Participating employers could choose from a variety of state-regulated coverage — traditional insurance, HMO plans, prepaid limited health service plans, prepaid health-clinic plans and health-flex plans. Employers must pay between 50 percent and 100 percent of the cost of coverage, with employees paying the remaining cost. Businesses eligible for the one-time rebate must provide and pay for coverage for 12 consecutive months.

The rebates would be funded through voluntary contributions from local governments in Volusia and Pasco counties, with the state giving matching funds equal to the amount provided by local governments. The pilot program will exist for two years in Volusia and Pasco counties, and if successful, could be expanded throughout Florida.

Make no mistake: The consequences we face by inaction on this important issue are grave. Floridians without insurance are less likely to have a usual place for medical care outside of the emergency room. They are more likely to go without screenings and preventive care, more likely to delay or skip needed medical care, and more likely to get sicker and die than Floridians with health insurance.

We need a new approach to health-care insurance that allows our citizens to get coverage in the most sensible way. Here in Volusia County we have the opportunity to be at the forefront of positive health insurance reform. My pilot program for small-business rebates would help get Florida on the right track towards the day when all its citizens can afford health insurance.

Private firms would provide the coverage
By Mark Hollis | South Florida Sun-Sentinel
April 1, 2008

West Palm Beach - At the neonatal intensive care unit in St. Mary’s Medical Center on Monday, Gov. Charlie Crist hesitatingly peeked inside a clear, lighted incubator.

Inside the isolette lay a day-old, 1.9-ounce baby, with limbs the size of fingers, who was born four months premature.

The unit can treat 70 babies at a time, said Joey Bulfin, the hospital’s chief nursing officer. And most days, she told the governor, a majority of the patients are born to parents who either don’t have insurance or lack coverage that would cover their treatment.

It’s a reason the hospital provided $102 million in uncompensated care last year, and it’s a factor in why patients with health insurance pay high costs for health care.
Crist visited the hospital and spent more than an hour with nurses and doctors there to make a point to legislators in Tallahassee.

The governor said Florida’s 3.8 million uninsured residents could have the option to purchase low-cost, low-coverage and state-approved health plans from private insurance companies. But the plan needs approval from the Legislature, which has been slow to debate the proposal even though it is the governor’s top 2008 legislative initiative.

“We have found a way to address the issue without costing the taxpayers anything,” Crist told a group of hospital administrators and physicians.

The two-month legislative session is half over, but Crist’s proposal is barely out of the draft stages. Senate Bill 2534 is scheduled to be heard in a Senate budget committee today, and it goes before a House Healthcare Council next week.

Many lawmakers have received little more than a few white papers and notes about the plan. Two area Democratic state lawmakers who joined Crist on the hospital tour, Reps. Maria Sachs of Delray Beach and Priscilla Taylor of West Palm Beach, said they knew few details.

The plan would allow insurers to offer plans without restrictions at $100 a month. That compares to the average private health insurance premium for individuals of about $260 a month, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.

It comes with a catch: It’s no-frills coverage. Crist calls it “flexible” coverage.

He said there would be at least two tiers of coverage. One, a non-catastrophic plan, would cover basics such as annual physicals and doctor visits for when patients get sick. A catastrophic plan, at a higher cost, would include emergency room treatment, outpatient surgery and hospitalization, but it would still limit the use of certain services to keep costs down.

Insurance and business lobbyists who support the initiative say one of the reasons health insurance is so expensive in Florida is because the state already has more than 50 health insurance “mandates” requiring coverage of everything from acupuncture to bone marrow transplants.

“If you don’t need pregnancy coverage, then you don’t have to buy it,” Crist said of the plan he’s recommending.

The legislation would allow state health officials to negotiate with insurance companies for low-cost coverage.

Taylor said she has one concern that she’ll want answered. She wants to know that there will be efforts to educate purchasers of the coverage that they aren’t getting traditional health coverage, like employer-sponsored plans, and which may not pay for all the treatments desired or needed.

Crist said there will be an effort to educate buyers.

“It’s very important that there be transparency and openness,” Crist said.

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