By James Jefferson
Arkansas News Bureau
LITTLE ROCK — Arkansas’ largest private insurance carrier said today it shared some of an industry group’s criticism of Senate health care reform legislation on the eve of a crucial vote by Sen. Blanche Lincoln on President Obama’s chief domestic priority.
An insurance industry report concluded the measure scheduled for a vote Tuesday in the Senate Finance Committee would drive up insurance premiums, an apparent shift in strategy for industry officials who for months have worked behind the scenes to help shape the health care overhaul.
Lincoln, a member of the committee, said she was troubled by the industry’s about-face and that “this tactic raises real doubts about their true commitment to health insurance reform all along.”
The industry report released today was commissioned by America’s Health Insurance Plans, of which Arkansas Blue Cross and Blue Shield is a member.
Blue Cross spokeswoman Max Heuer declined to discuss specifics of the group’s analysis, compiled by PricewaterhouseCoopers, concluding Senate health care legislation would add $1,700 a year to the cost of family coverage and $600 more to individual premiums in 2013, when most of the major provisions in the bill would be in effect.
“It’s their analysis,” Heuer said, “but we have been concerned about some of the provisions that we do think will increase costs.”
Chief among them, she said, are new taxes and what the industry considers a weak mandate that would allow Americans to put off purchasing health care coverage until they get sick.
“There are some provisions that we support, and have been, but for it to work, for the cost to start going down, you can’t just say everyone who wants insurance now has access to it,” Heuer said. “You have to have an effective individual responsibility requirement for people to purchase insurance. That requirement has been watered down greatly in this bill.
“We have concluded (the bill) will increase costs to the people who have insurance and do nothing to bring in the younger, healthier individuals because the costs will be higher for them.”
She said the company, which as of August counted 133,527 Arkansans among its individual policyholders under 65, would work to improve final health care legislation.
Lincoln said she was encouraged by a Congressional Budget Office report last week that the Finance Committee bill would not add to the federal deficit, would reduce costs over time, would create health insurance exchanges and would not change the coverage people already have through their employer or the individual insurance market if they wish to keep it.
“These are all things that Arkansans tell me are important to them,” the senator said. “It’s not a perfect bill, but I’m troubled by this 11th-hour attempt from the health insurance industry to discredit a bill that was crafted through a transparent and participatory process dating back to last year.”
Other congressional Democrats and the White House dismissed the insurance industry report as a hatchet job.
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The Associated Press contributed to this report
