The leaders of the Maryland General Assembly committee on health care funding and delivery said financing expanded access to health insurance needs to be a top item on the table as the state grapples with a $1.4 billion structural deficit and the revenues to pay for it.
After a three-hour hearing Tuesday, Sen. Robert Garagiola, D-Montgomery County, and Del. Dan Morhaim, D-Baltimore County, said they expect to come up with a set of recommendations by the fall in case there is a special session to deal with the deficit.
“If we?re going to do it all, let?s do it all” and “set aside some of those dollars” for health care, Garagiola said. He said he?s had several conversations with Health Secretary John Colmers, who testified at the hearing.
“[The General Assembly is] rolling up their sleeves and they?re looking at their options,” Garagiola said.
“A significant portion of the deficit relates to health care,” Morhaim said, with $6 billion, a fifth of the state budget, going to Medicaid, the federally subsidized health care for the poor.
“We?ve got one bite of the apple” to raise new revenues, Garagiola said.
Morhaim agreed. “Everything is on the table,” the senator said, including an increase in the cigarette tax to pay for expanding health care coverage. The House passed such a proposal this year, but the Senate rejected the plan because of its costs.
The estimated 780,000 uninsured Marylanders already are costing the state and their fellow citizens more than $1 billion per year, said Rex Cowdry, executive director of the rate-setting Maryland Health Care Commission. These costs come largely through the uncompensated care given in hospital emergency rooms, which are factored into increased hospital rates paid by private, state and federal health plans.
“Premiums for family coverage were estimated to be $948 higher because of uncompensated care in 2005,” Cowdry said, a number that?s probably up to $1,100 now. That?s despite the fact that a majority of the uninsured are young and healthy.
Morhaim, a physician, said looking at reducing administrative overhead, which represents 8 percent to 20 percent of the costs in medical offices, is “one of the areas that?s been overlooked.”
“We spend a lot pushing money from place to place” in health care, said Sen. Delores Kelley, D-Baltimore County.
