Local health care provider decries government option : Steve McConnell
By: Health Insurance
Submitted: 2009-08-30 11:35:25 | Word Count: 758
A major health-insurance provider that serves Wayne County and Northeastern Pennsylvania is against the federal government becoming a player in the market.
Blue Cross of Northeastern Pennsylvania does not support an expansive federal-government health insurance offering, the so-called public option, as proposed by the Obama Administration and Democratic members of Congress, said a company spokesperson. The company does support mandated coverage for all Americans, however, a provision that may be part of the hotly disputed health-care reform package.
“We do agree that reform is necessary, and we do think that the government has a role in the process,” said Anthony Matrisciano, the spokesperson, in a recent interview with The Wayne Independent. “We think that that role is to create a level-playing field for all insurers, meaning that everyone is mandated to have coverage.”
Blue Cross of Northeastern Pennsylvania covers 13 counties in the region, a provider of both employer and non-employer based policies.
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(The company has asked a state regulator for permission to hike some non-employer based premiums by up to 49 percent next year, as reported in The Wayne Independent. Some policies will increase more than $200-a-month, filings with the state Department of Insurance show. Matrisciano could not confirm or deny if employed-based premiums would also be hiked.)
Other health-insurance providers throughout the U.S. have echoed the same sentiment as Blue Cross of Northeastern Pennsylvania regarding the public option, stirring protests outside their corporate offices as federal legislators begin another hard month of health-care reform debate in Washington.
Gene Molessa, a Honesdale small business owner, said he supports a public option and health-care reform since costs are spiraling out of control. He now pays 10 percent of his business’s gross income on health-care coverage, he said.
“We got to give people a choice,” he said. “A choice is the same as an option.”
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO), which analyzes the impact of legislation on the federal budget, reported that health-care costs are indeed rising on an average of 12 percent annually.
Yet at a town hall forum last Tuesday held by Democratic U.S. Rep. Chris Carney in Honesdale, most of the public dissent targeted the public option, citing its expense while pointing to a government-run plan for seniors that is on the financial brink, Medicare.
Some said they were in favor of the public option, while the congressman said it may not even be an option since the administration gave signs of backing away from it last week. Although this week the president has affirmed that it should be part of overhauling the costly system, The Associated Press reported.
“The president himself had said this public option is the gateway to the single-payer system,” said Matrisciano, of the concept that the government would become the only provider of health insurance in the country. “They (CBO) also predicted that tens of millions of people who are now privately insured would migrate to the government plan.”
He added that the company supports health-care reform in general, such as reducing medical-care costs and forcing coverage of pre-existing conditions.
The Obama Administration has argued that a public option would extend coverage to millions of uninsured Americans who cannot afford it in the private marketplace. According to the state Department of Insurance, nearly one in five adults in Wayne County do not have health insurance.
“There is a lot of misinformation out there about the public option,” said Berry Friesen, spokesperson for the Pennsylvania Health Access Network, an advocacy group for reform. “It’s part of the key to bring costs under control.”
Said Matrisciano: “We don’t support a government-run option because we don’t think it will address those costs. We point to Medicare, Medicaid.”
The local Blue Cross spokesperson said the company often experiences “cost shifting” when government-run Medicare underpays a hospital or physician, for example; they then overcharge Blue Cross later to compensate, he said.
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