Patients to Senator Hagedorn: Please do nothing!

April 16th, 2008 | by Brian T. Schwartz |

Senator Bob Hagedorn is obsessed with not "doing nothing" about health care in Colorado. On March 28 the Denver Post quoted him as saying "I believe it is immoral for us to sit on our hands and do nothing." At an April 9 meeting of the Senate Health and Human Services meeting that I attended, he said "The alternative to this bill is to do nothing, and I do not find that acceptable."

So to "do something," Hagedorn along with Senator Steve Johnson and Represenatives Anne McGihon, Tom Massey, and Ellen Roberts are sponsoring Senate Bill 217 , which continues the failed traditions of bureaucrats telling consumers what products insurance companies can or cannot offer them.
Under SB 217, the Division of insurance and a "panel of expert advisors" will solicit proposals from insurance companies for "value benefit plans" (VBPs) that fit the Bill’s specific requirements. Taxpayers would be forced to subsidize premiums for low-income individuals who qualify for these plans.

If passed, taxpayers not to buy insurance approved by the Colorado government will become criminals. SB-217 proposes a "mechanism to enforce the mandate through the state tax code." So if you do not buy insurance and do not comply with the related aspect of the tax code, you’ll end up in prison.

A popular rationale for this compulsory insurance is the "cost-shift from the uninsured." I have shown the injustice of such reasoning in my article about how this is a form of collective punishment .

In an editorial endorsing the bill, the Denver Post editors write that the bill is "aimed at providing the foundation for universal health care coverage in 2010. It’s patterned after the path blazed by Massachusetts under Gov. Mitt Romney by mandating health insurance for citizens who now lack it."

But as Dr. Paul Hsieh has pointed out in a Denver Post Guest Commentary , the Massachusetts health plan has been a disaster: "rather than creating a utopia of high-quality affordable health care, the result has been the exact opposite — skyrocketing costs, worsened access, and lower quality health care." Dr. Hsieh has kept a record of horror stories from the failed Massachusetts plan.

In Hagedorn’s April 9 testimony, he acknowledged the Massachusetts plan failed because "government-designed … bureaucrat-designed health insurance plans will not work." But what then are the "Value Benefit Plans" he proposes in SB 217? As Mark Hillman observes in a Rocky Mountain News Speakout :

"In calling for health insurance companies to design ‘value benefit plans’ to provide a low-cost insurance alternative, the bill says that the state ’shall not specify benefits or other details’ of those plans. Just two paragraphs later, however, the bill stipulates a dozen mandated benefits or other details that value benefit plans must include."

Among the dozen requirements is that in developing the Value Benefit Plans, insurers should "assume that all Colorado residents would be required to purchase health insurance." As the editors of the Colorado Springs Gazette comment (scroll down), "it’s a bit like addressing the homeless problem with a mandate that every human buy a house, or else suffer financial punishment."

In his April 9 testimony, Senator Hagedorn commented this this proposal was a "carrot approach, not a stick." Hmm. The threat of prison for not buying politician-approved health insurance looks more like a stick to me.

In response to a question from a Committee member, Hagedorn says that the "kiss of death to the whole concept would be to load up mandates." Hagedorn was referring to what insurance plans must cover to be legal in Colorado. As Mark Hillman observes : "Colorado law already requires most health plans to cover at least 16 specific items. Let me put that another way: know-it-all politicians don’t think we are smart enough to make our own health care choices, so rather than give us options, they order us to buy what they think we need."

As I’ve written before , Colorado law compels widowed wives to pay higher premiums for prostate screening, maternity, and marital therapy. Studies have shown that these controls are responsible for up to 25 percent of America’s uninsured.

In the same April 9 session where Senator Hagedorn admitted the harms of mandated benefits, Senator Shultheis inquired about removing existing mandates. Hagedorn replied essentially that this would be politically infeasible because of special interests. My guess that he was referring to disease constituencies and providers of certain medical services. So politicians caved into special interests when passing these mandates, and will not repeal them.

So what’s going to happen when mothers on one of these Value Benefits Plans shows up at a Health & Human Services Committee hearing with her kids? Say the kids are autistic , have a cleft palate, or something else no parent would wish upon any child. When mothers ask why her insurance doesn’t cover this, what are the politicians going to do? Is it possible that a politicians from one party would favor adding the coverage, and brand those from other parties as heartless and cruel?