They’re obsessing in Annapolis over electricity rates even as thousands of people in Maryland face a much bigger problem: no health insurance. State legislators did nothing during the regular session to provide coverage to the 15 percent of the state’s residents who lack it.
They did something more sinister instead. They ordered one company to pay 8 percent of its payroll toward health insurance or send the difference to Annapolis. The law covers all firms with 10,000 or more employees. Only Wal-Mart qualifies. People need health insurance, so the legislators slapped the state’s biggest employer in the face. This is leadership?
Wal-Mart isn’t likely to be alone for long, however, because legislators sooner or later will expand this pernicious law’s coverage. But Maryland’s small businesses already can’t afford the state’s burdensome health care regulations, with its meddlesome requirements for infertility treatments, medical food and 24 other types of coverage. No wonder only about 40 percent of small employers offer health insurance to workers, and since 1999, the number doing so has dropped 13 percent. Such data shows why forcing small employers to buy health insurance won’t work.
But maybe that’s what legislators and the unions behind the Wal-Mart bill want: Fix things so private firms simply can’t provide insurance and then point to government-run health care as the best solution. This trickle-down approach to a single-payer system would injure countless businesses and do nothing to promote public health.
It would be better to enact genuine structural reforms to make private health insurance affordable for everyone. State Sen. E.J. Pipkin, a Republican from the Eastern Shore, introduced legislation in 2006 that would do that. His CHOICE bill — Consumer Health Open Insurance Coverage — would create a health care exchange like Massachusetts’ new system that lets individuals choose their coverage.
Competing plans would be required to offer a shorter list of major medical coverage than currently mandated, but more extensive plans would remain available. The whole point is to expand choice and the pool of people being covered. The CHOICE exchange spreads risk across the whole state, not just a handful of people within a small business. Pipkin’s plan wouldn’t depend on employers, but businesses would contribute to the plan. You would be able to keep your coverage when you switch or lose jobs. This would solve a huge problem, as multiple studies show that a large chunk of the nation’s estimated 46 million uninsured are only temporarily so. Median job tenure is about four years, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Another benefit is that participants would be eligible for a tax credit of $500 for an individual and $1,000 for a family to make it easier for the uninsured to buy a plan. It’s not a cure-all, but Pipkin’s plan seriously addresses making health care affordable and available to all people in Maryland. He is a leader. It’s time all his colleagues in the state legislature followed suit and enacted health care reform based on consumer choice, portability and affordability.
