Jeff Bingaman United States Senator from New Mexico

Recent studies indicate that about 73% of Americans with health insurance are happy with their coverage.  I have heard concerns from many of these insured New Mexicans that health care reform would only affect the uninsured, is too expensive, or is unnecessary.

The financial necessity of accomplishing meaningful health care reform cannot be overstated.  As of 2005, annual insurance premiums cost each family an extra $1,000 to cover care for the uninsured.  Between 2000 and 2007, premiums increased more than four times as median wages for New Mexicans.  The Congressional Budget Office estimates that without reform, total health care spending will nearly double in the next 20 years and will be half our national gross domestic product (GDP) by 2082.  We can’t afford not to reform our health care system.

Health care reform will protect consumers—those already with insurance coverage and those seeking coverage—by instituting insurance market reforms that guarantee all policies to be stable, secure, and meaningful.  I addressed some other concerns about health care reform in my July newsletter, and below I’ve used examples of how the reform we are crafting in the Senate would affect New Mexicans:

•  Health reform would remove caps on annual and lifetime coverage. Santa Fe resident Mary and her family pay for their own health insurance, and put aside savings for unforeseen medical expenses.  But when their insurance didn’t cover tens of thousands of dollars for her teenage son’s necessary treatment, Mary and her husband had to use all their savings for the lifesaving surgery.  Mary was shortly thereafter diagnosed with cancer and her husband then lost his job, sending the family in a financial tailspin with no way out, no way to pay their medical bills, and worried about what one more diagnosis would do.

Health care reform bills making their way through Congress all include provisions that would forbid the sorts of arbitrary limits that forced Mary and her family to pay tens of thousands of dollars for necessary medical expenses.  Mary and her family paid into the system when they were healthy with the expectation that insurance would pay for them if they needed it; that expectation should be honored.

 

As a small business owner, I would like to offer health insurance to my employees but it’s too expensive.  Will this bill help me extend coverage to my employees? 

•  Reform would help small businesses provide health insurance to their employees.  Dan is a New Mexican small business owner who has tried to provide health care benefits for his employees but has been unable to find an affordable plan.  A healthy 57 year-old, his premium has increased twice in three years, and he worries about the devastating effect of an unforeseen medical emergency for him or his employees.

The proposed health plan would help small businesses by providing tax incentives for those who offer employee health insurance.  For Dan and his employees, this would mean that either the business or its employees would have a tax break to help make coverage affordable.  The plan also would set up a health insurance exchange – a marketplace where individuals can shop around for health care.

 

I cannot get affordable insurance because I have a chronic disease.  How will health insurance reform help me?

• Reform would forbid insurance companies from excluding people based on pre-existing conditions.  New Mexican Elise S.was diagnosed with lupus in 1985, when she was insured through her family’s small business.  But she lost that coverage when the company was sold in 2002.  After searching exhaustively and being repeatedly denied health insurance from multiple companies because of her lupus—what insurers call a pre-existing condition—Elise finally found a plan, underwritten by the state of New Mexico, that would accept her.  Unfortunately, that plan has still refused to cover various necessary surgeries and treatments.

I believe every American should be able to have at least some choice in attainingaffordablehealth insurance for themselves and their families.  People with pre-existing conditions, like Elise, are no different and should be able to choose their insurance company just like the healthiest among us.  Under proposed health care reform legislation in Congress, they would be.