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Wednesday, April 06, 2011
Insurance Exchange's Cost Is Too High
By Devon Day
President, Day Financial
It would be a nice change of pace for the Albuquerque Chamber of Commerce to stand behind a bill that is actually good for business, rather than Senate Bill 38/370 to create a health insurance exchange. This should be vetoed by Gov. Susana Martinez.
It is a roundabout way of supporting ObamaCare, which in no way, shape or form will be helpful to business, especially in a state like New Mexico, which consists of mostly smaller businesses with fewer than 50 employees.
New Mexico already has a wide range of group and individual plans available, and two excellent high-risk pools that have been effectively operating for many years. It is impossible not to be able to obtain and afford health insurance in this state.
Creating a health insurance exchange is taking away programs that already work and replacing them with a program that is heavily dependent on federal dollars and the ability to then charge fees to insurance companies, who will then pass that cost onto the consumer.
Does this sound like a sustainable, realistic way to bring down the cost of health care?
If we insure 300,000 more New Mexicans, costs will not come down. An exchange and the full implementation of ObamaCare will simply allow people to obtain insurance when they need it and drop it when they don't.
This will bankrupt the insurance companies and create an impossible level of premium increases. Just look at Massachusetts.
Currently, the N.M. Medical Insurance Pool and N.M. Health Insurance Alliance have rules and requirements necessary to provide a viable system for obtaining health insurance for those who truly qualify.
The funding has to come from somewhere to support an exchange. Even if the dollars are federal, those dollars are coming from taxpayers, which means in New Mexico the owners of very small businesses that support the economy of our state and employ the majority of people.
The system we have in New Mexico for insuring people is viable and sustainable. Taking that away and replacing it with yet another board-run, federally dependent untested exchange is a huge mistake.
Chamber of Commerce CEO Terri Cole is correct in that if New Mexico does not set up an exchange by 2015, the feds will do it for us. I would hope by 2015, we realize that this will be impossible, as there will be no federal dollars available or that the tax increases needed to fund these ideas will not come to pass. We are trying to decrease the spending level, not increase it.
There is already talk of modifying ObamaCare. Let's not rush to implement a program that will raise taxes and costs to the detriment of the economy in New Mexico.
Members of the Chamber of Commerce need to ask its leadership to be more careful in the bills they support. Or possibly to obtain different leadership.
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