Support community rating of health risks in HB 1355; it's pro small employer

I thought you might be interested in our email letter to the Colorado state Senate…

Dear Senator _____________ ,

I am writing regarding HB 1355, which I understand has passed Committee and will soon be before the full Senate.  Fair Employment for Cancer Patients & Survivors-(FECAPS) supports this bill, and urges you to do likewise. 

We support it not because it may increase the cost of insurance, but because it will allow health insurance to remain widely available to those who need it.  While the insurance companies would love to sell their products only to those who will never file a claim, the purpose of insurance is to cover the medical expenses of those who do incur illness and do file claims. At any time, that can be you or any of your loved ones, although we wish you and your family nothing but the best of health.

Under today’s rate banding regulations, the Law of Unintended Consequences is in full effect.  Labor discrimination has replaced underwriting discrimination, both at the hiring level for new employees and at the firing level for existing employees who acquire a serious illness.

The present law gives small employers an economic incentive to “get rid of” existing employees with medical histories, and to not hire older employees who have a greater probability of contracting an illness. The current insurance law engenders both age and disability discrimination, which is against Federal law (the ADA).

In 2005, my wife contracted breast cancer.  Her employer’s health plan covered her chemotherapy, surgery, and radiation therapy, and she survived her ordeal.  But within months after resuming her full time job, she was fired for “no reason” just days before her employer’s group insurance plan was to renew.  She was an exemplary employee, and the real reason for her dismissal was that she was the cause of her employer’s health plan rates going through the roof.  She now has a disability discrimination complaint against her former employer before the EEOC, which will soon go forward to Federal court. 

Since we started FECAPS, we have heard from many other individuals in similar circumstances, both in Colorado and other states that do not mandate community-based underwriting for small businesses.

The discontinuance of rate banding will INCREASE the number of insured’s, as employees with medical histories will be able to keep both their insurance coverage and their jobs. Yes, group premiums may increase overall as younger, healthier employees help pay the claims of older employees. That’s what insurance is all about.  As the younger employees age and require increasing care, their younger brethren in turn will assist them. That’s what our society is supposed to be about: taking care of others so they will be taken care of when their time comes.

Why the Denver and Boulder newspapers are against immediate reform is beyond us, unless as employers they are afraid of having to make higher premium contributions on behalf of their own covered employees.

One’s position on this issue depends on whose ox is being gored. If it comes down to insurance premiums increasing slightly in order to provide greater coverage, so be it. The insurers and most profitable employers can cut into their profit margins a bit in order to afford it. In any case, they will ultimately pass it on to their customers in some other way. Wage-based employees have no profit margin to rely on, and no other source of health coverage short of expensive individual policies.

Of course the real issue is to remove health insurance coverage from the responsibility of the employers. What is needed is a system of affordable health care that is not tied to employment, while still administered by the insurers.  All other “solutions” are simply band-aids on a wound that can only be healed by this approach.  Let’s stop dancing around the real issue: the states are going to have to compromise on health insurance regulation.

The problem we have now is not unlike national defense, where the sheer economic burden cannot be borne by individual states nor single businesses. Healthcare too has become simply too massive of an expense, even for the insurers. But the solution cannot be to ration health care, which the current state laws now do by virtue of discriminatory underwriting.

But before any other system takes hold, don’t let the insurance companies dictate our state’s health policy.  We in Colorado must lead the nation in our efforts to restore the right of access to quality health care to all of our citizens.

PAUL HILL, Director, Fair Employment for Cancer Patients & Survivors (FECAPS)

For a detailed analysis of the illegal workplace discrimination that is being caused by current insurance practices, visit

http://www.fecaps.co…