Spin Tactics to Justify Voting against Insurance for Pregnant Women

Yet according to the Senate Republicans’ talking-points shop, everyone in Colorado will feel an increase in their health care expenses – even though the bill clearly affects only the individual and small-group markets. And in an effort to distract from the fact that Republicans are voting to withhold insurance coverage from pregnant women in Colorado, the ColoradoSenateNews.com release obfuscates the plain language of the bill, claiming instead that it mandates oh-so-scary “reproductive services” (social conservative dog whistle for abortion…even though abortion isn’t even mentioned in the bill).

Full release after the jump – as well as the questions discerning reporters should ask before just reprinting the ColoradoSenateNews.com release…

Colorado Democrats make healthcare more expensive for everyone!

Posted Thu, 11 Mar 2010

By mandating insurance companies to cover reproductive services and contraception in all small group and individual plans, Republicans believe ruling Democrats are effectively making coverage more expensive for everyone. [emphasis mine: The bill does not add a maternity mandate to Colorado’s group market; Colorado Revised Statute 10-16-104(3) has required maternity coverage in the group market since the 1970s.]

Mandates require insurers to pay for care consumers previously funded out of their own pocket, such is the case with House Bill 1021 sponsored by Sens. Joyce Foster, D-Denver, and Betty Boyd, D-Lakewood.

“Whenever we put a mandate on medical insurance, we make it more expensive,” said Sen. Nancy Spence, R-Centennial.

Another consequence of increasing price is that healthy individuals, often young people with low salaries, drop coverage. Ironically, those are the exact people the system needs to offset the cost of covering people who are not healthy. This creates a downward spiral in which costs increase further and fewer individuals are covered.

According to eHealthInsurance.com in states like New Jersey and New York, which have passed similar mandates, individual policies for a 25-year old female can cost as much as $1,100 per month. “This hurts people right on the brink of being able to afford coverage,” Spence said. “If it passes, they will be more likely to opt out of buying insurance.”

HB 1021 still needs final approval from the Senate before advancing to the Governor’s desk.

So let’s just break some of this down, shall we?

1. How much will adding maternity coverage as a covered benefit increase costs in the individual market?

Short answer: Nobody has been able to say for sure. Long answer: The ColoradoSenateNews.com release quotes figures from New Jersey and New York, which as we all know have higher costs of living than Colorado does, so that’s just comparing apples to oranges. Moreover, both the New Jersey and New York laws mandate coverage in every policy as indicated by such plain language as “Every health insurance policy providing hospital or medical expense benefits delivered, issued, executed or renewed in this State, or approved for issuance or renewal in this State by the Commissioner of Insurance on or after the effective date of this amendatory and supplementary act, shall offer coverage for maternity care…” (New Jersey Annotated Statutes
17B:26-2.1b) and “Every contract issued by a corporation subject to the provisions of this article which provides hospital service, medical expense indemnity or both shall provide coverage for maternity care…” (New York Insurance Law Section 4303(c)).

Last time I checked, “every health insurance policy” is not the same as “the majority of policies”… again, not an apples-to-apples comparison. Complicating the comparison are numbers released by California’s mandated health benefits review commission, which found that mandating maternity coverage as a core benefit in every individual insurance policy in that state would increase premium costs by an average of $7.17 per month per policy holder — or $86 per year.

2. Will requiring carriers to cover maternity care in the majority of their policies make a difference in Colorado?

Short answer: Yes. Long answer: A quick EHealthInsurance.com search for an individual insurance plan for a healthy, 33-year-old, non-smoking female in the 80203 ZIP code who’s looking for set office-visit copays of no more than $35 per visit and who is willing to pay up to 20% of medical costs out-of-pocket and to have up to a $2,500 deductible currently can choose from TWO plans that cover maternity care — compared to 128 that do not. And those plans start at $280/month ($2,500 deductible; $310 for a $1,500 deductible). And those plans are offered only by one carrier — even though 9 carriers sell plans in the individual market. So if House Bill 1021 passes as Senate Democrats amended it today — to require the majority of policies issued by each carrier to cover maternity care — a quick application of that law to the 128 plans currently offered would mean that same woman could choose from at least 65 plans rather than two. Last I heard, the Republicans touted increased competition in the marketplace as the ideal strategy to reduce costs for any commodity — so shouldn’t a law change that increases competition by 3,250% be a good thing?

3. Will people drop coverage because their premiums increase?

Possibly — but left unanswered is how many currently uninsured women of child-bearing age will now be able to access insurance coverage for pregnancy? We already know that more than 130,000 women aged 19-64 purchased insurance through the individual market, and because pregnancy is not currently covered as a core benefit right now, risked foregoing critical prenatal care if they were pregnant because their insurance didn’t cover that care.

We also know 269,000 women aged 19-64 are uninsured — a market that could potentially now jump into the individual insurance market because there will be many more options available. So let’s just have a comprehensive discussion about how the individual market will evolve — not focusing only on the potential drop-outs from the existing market without recognizing the potential increase in people into the individual pool.