TALLAHASSEE (Daytona Beach News-Journal) - With families and businesses struggling to afford health care, Gov. Charlie Crist and Florida lawmakers are moving forward with proposals that would allow people to buy cheaper, stripped-down insurance.
The proposals would reduce or eliminate required types of coverage that insurers and business groups have long argued drive up the costs of health policies.
Instead, people could choose policies that would provide fewer benefits at a lower cost. A Senate committee passed a Crist-backed proposal Tuesday that supporters say would cost about $150 a month for individual coverage.
Jim Cameron, a vice president of The Chamber, Daytona Beach/Halifax area, said the proposals could help as businesses struggle to deal with steadily increasing costs for health insurance.
"It's not a pretty picture," said Cameron, who lobbies for the chamber. "More of our businesses -- especially small businesses -- are having a difficult time in maintaining the health insurance as a benefit for their employees."
But Rep. Joyce Cusack, D-DeLand, said she is concerned that people could buy the stripped-down policies and later find they don't have the types of coverage they need for health problems.
"When they need it, they don't even know what they've got," said Cusack, a nurse who is a member of the House Healthcare Council.
With an estimated 3.6 million people lacking health insurance in 2006, Florida has one of the highest rates of uninsured people in the country.
Nationally, about 46.5 million lacked insurance, with the problem particularly affecting people such as young adults, minorities and low-wage workers, according to a 2007 Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation report.
A lack of insurance can cause people to forgo preventive health care, expose them to potentially devastating medical bills and send them to hospital emergency rooms for relatively routine care.
The legislative proposals focus, at least in part, on reducing about 50 requirements -- known as "mandates" -- that dictate benefits in health-insurance plans. The mandates cover a wide range of health issues but include such common things as covering mammograms and diabetes treatment.
The Senate Banking and Insurance Committee on Tuesday approved Crist's proposal that would create a system allowing people to buy coverage from two types of scaled-back plans. The coverage would be available to people ages 19 to 64 who are uninsured.
The plans would keep a handful of mandates, including preventive care such as mammograms and prostate screenings. One plan would provide catastrophic coverage including hospital stays, but the other would not.
Crist's proposal also would allow more families to insure children through the state's KidCare program. That program is largely designed to provide subsidized coverage to low-income families, but the proposal would increase the number of other families who could buy into the program without receiving state subsidies.
While senators moved forward with Crist's proposal Tuesday, the House likely will offer a plan in the coming weeks that would be more far-reaching.
House Healthcare Chairman Aaron Bean, R-Fernandina Beach, said that plan would eliminate mandates and allow consumers to pick and choose the types of benefits they want -- a concept he calls the "farmer's marketplace."
Depending on the types of coverage chosen, those policies could be cheaper than the plans sought by Crist. But Bean said he will work to reach agreement with the governor on a final proposal.
As published on Daytona Beach News-Journal
