Health Care Solution: It's in the mail
Editorial
From Kentucky Citizen Digest, Sept, 1997

According to the newspapers, they're “calling for more talks,” attempting to “broker a compromise,” and trying to “reopen negotiations.”  No, it’s not another UPS strike that has captured the headlines; it is the ongoing saga of the Kentucky Health Care Reform Act, and the daily battle over whether or not the governor will call a special session of the legislature to address the problems caused by the reforms.

Chief evangelist of the reform, former Gov. Brereton Jones, claimed that Kentucky’s health care reform measures were enacted to make insurance more available and more affordable to those individuals in the state who, for various medical reasons, were unable to purchase insurance.

Logically, any liberalization of the guidelines for insuring these high-risk, high-cost individuals, was going to have to be shared by the total number of individuals currently being insured in the state.

The Kentucky legislation, however, only affects non-ERISA insurance plans — that is, it applies only to smaller companies (with 100 or fewer employees) and it exempts individuals who buy their insurance through “associations,” such as the Chamber of Commerce or Farm Bureau.

Furthermore, the governor called for an extension of the deadline for any remaining policies coming under the reform until October 15.

So, if we start with all of the people covered by insurance in the state, remove those who are insured by large corporations, those whose companies self insure, those who purchase through an association, and those whose policies have yet to come up for renewal under the reform because of the governor’s extension, we are left with a handful of policy holders (100,000) whose costs have skyrocketed in order to bear the burden of insuring the technically “uninsurable.”

These individuals and small businesses do not have any “collective bargaining” clout. They have been singled out to carry the huge burden of covering the most high-cost participants in the state, and they are defenseless.

It is unconscionable that these individuals and small businesses should be left in the lurch while we wait, day-to-day, to find out if any relief is in sight.

To be fair, Gov. Patton did not create the health care reform act — he inherited it.  But, the governor has demonstrated estimable political prowess on other issues which predated his administration, such as workers’ compensation reform, and higher education reform.

We have found that Gov. Patton can accomplish anything that he sets his sights on. But with his on-again, off-again commitment to a special-session on health care, we are left to wonder whether Gov. Patton knows what he wants in this arena.
 

Key Family Foundation Contacts: Kent Ostrander, Executive Director Martin Cothran, Senior Associate Policy Analyst