As many of you already know the Blue Ribbon Commission on Healthcare (208 Commission) has been meeting and hearing from many groups on how to achieve the goal of universal healthcare coverage.

Massachusetts caught people’s attention by a bold effort to achieve universal healthcare coverage. They are to be commended for their willingness to act, but there is one major problem with the plan.

If you have no way to ensure the cost of insurance premiums are reasonable, then one has merely handed the insurance industry a captive audience with people forced to buy over-priced insurance and the government forced to subsidize over-priced insurance with NO tool for downward price pressure to make sure it is affordable.

**Colorado has NO RATE REVIEW OF ANY KIND for health insurance before rate hikes take effect — which means there is NO OVERSIGHT to prevent over-charging people for those premiums.

Some of the plans before the 208 Commission include a mandate on individuals to buy health insurance. I can not emphasize this enough:

IF WE DO NOT HAVE RATE REVIEW OR PRIOR APPROVAL BEFORE INSURANCE RATE HIKES CAN TAKE EFFECT, WE WILL CONTINUE DRIVE UP THE COST OF HEALTHCARE.

WITHOUT THESE BASIC PROTECTIONS WE WOULD SIMPLY BE FORCING PEOPLE TO BUY ALREADY OVER-PRICED HEALTH INSURANCE POLICIES.

Denial of services or coverage or lifestyle alone will not reduce insurance premiums and make it more affordable. Even healthy people with healthy lifestyles get sick. Ask (healthy, fit) Rep. Merrifield who thankfully just beat a round with cancer. Or my father, who died from complications from Parkinson’s Disease.

I would be OK with a mandated purchase of health insurance if we could ensure the rates were affordable, not over-priced, and available on a sliding scale based on ability to pay. But without rate review we have no means of ensuring the prices people are paying are fair and justified. Without rate review, we will be making a bad situation worse.

Please contact the 208 commission and tell them that you would oppose mandated purchase of health insurance unless it comes with rate review and a sliding scale on ability to pay.

Blue Ribbon Commission for Health Care Reform
303 E. 17^th Avenue, Ste. 400
Denver, CO 80203

Tel: 1-888-776-2332

Fax: 303-837-8496

E-mail: 208commission@coloradofoundation.org
Website: www.colorado.gov/208commission

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 15th, 2007 at 1:07 pm and is filed under Elected, Democratic Issues. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.