Courtney joins coalition pushing health insurance bill, Journal Inquirer

Courtney joins coalition pushing health insurance bill

By Don Michak

Journal Inquirer

Published: Wednesday, June 11, 2008 12:11 PM EDT

U.S. Rep. Joseph D. Courtney, D-2nd District, on Tuesday joined a bipartisan group of legislators, trade associations, and one of the nation’s biggest unions to push legislation they said would make health insurance more available and affordable for small businesses and the self-employed.

Courtney’s role in the group backing the bill is notable not only because of his longtime interest in health insurance issues — the Vernon lawyer had served a chairman of the General Assembly’s Public Health Committee before he was elected to his first congressional term two years ago — but also because it includes the relatively influential National Federation of Independent Businesses.
NFIB, with offices in Washington, D.C. and all of the 50 states, had supported the Republican incumbent Courtney narrowly unseated in 2006, former Rep. Robert R. Simmons of Stonington.

Courtney said today that while he recalled that during the campaign the NFIB was a “huge Simmons backer” and behind certain direct mail messages that favored his opponent, he believed the organization was most interested today in addressing what he suggested is the most pressing complaint of its members — the soaring costs of health care benefits.
“That part of the health insurance market is broken,” Courtney said. “If you’re self-employed, or if you have a small pool, the rates just kill you because the system doesn’t price the product the same way as larger employer pools or public-employee pools. It just keeps getting worse every year.’”

“It wasn’t that long ago that I was paying the premiums for a seven-person office,” added the congressman. “It’s something I certainly remember very well. And it’s no coincidence that the real estate agents and small machine shops are the ones really complaining the loudest about the huge increase in health care costs.”

The proposed Small Business Health Options Program, which its sponsors call the “SHOP Act,” would permit employers and the self-employed beginning next year to join a state purchasing pool to get lower premiums as well as a tax credit if their states chose to adopt certain “small group” market reforms. By 2011, it would allow small businesses to join a nationwide pool to purchase health insurance.

The legislation would prohibit insurers from using the businesses’ health status and claims experience for both the nationwide pool and the states’ small group markets.

It also would create a Web site offering comparative information about a variety of plans, and permit trade associations and other groups to function as “navigators’ to inform businesses and self-employed.

Supporters of the proposal say it would make insurance cheaper for the 47.1 million employees of the nation’s 5.8 million small businesses and for 14.1 million self-employed individuals.

Accompanying Courtney and the other lawmakers at Tuesday’s Capitol Hill press conference to unveil the bill were representatives of NFIB, as well as from the National Association of Realtors and the Service Employees International Union.

Courtney said today that the “extraordinary coalition” was forged by the need to create an affordable health insurance system.

He said a previous bid by President Bush to create a national insurance pool for small businesses had failed “because his proposal basically would have wiped out state-mandated benefits” and “didn’t provide for any coverage for anything beyond hospital and doctors’ visits.”

“This bill does incorporate existing state-mandated mandates for the national pool, and refers to the National Institutes of Medicine in terms of setting a benefit package,” he added. “That’s a far cry from the Bush proposal in terms of mental health, substance abuse, cancer treatments, Lyme disease treatments — all of the things people have fought for at the state level.”

Courtney acknowledged that the legislation was “obviously, not a way to get to universal coverage,” but said it would “get to the underlying problem.”

“At the end of the day, this country has got to decide what is insurance,” he said. “If insurance is about a product that is designed to avoid risk, that’s not going to fix the problem. People are going to continue to get hurt by something that tries to find a pre-existing condition and sets the cost on a very fragmented market. If the system is based on pooling risk and enlarging the number of people who are insured, then we’ve got a chance to get the cost issue under control.”