HB 515 & Health Insurance

---By Representative Lee Quandt

HB 515 reference health insurance purchasing alliances was introduced as a two-paragraph bill to allow groups to band together to purchase insurance. The bill had a public hearing before the Commerce Committee and assigned a sub committee to look into it more in depth. This is customary on bills like this. Somewhere in the process, a 12-page amendment was used to wipe out the two paragraph original bill. Although the new “hijacked” bill had a couple of sub committee hearings the bill was not allowed a full public hearing to obtain as much information as possible before the committee voted on it. In fact, a committee member took HB515 to several business organizations for presentations before some members of the sub committee saw the pirated version and well before the full committee saw the bill.

Matt and I worked hard to get SB110 replaced with a more workable insurance bill. The selling points for the new plan are that “it will dovetail with SB125, allow groups to band together to purchase lower priced health insurance”. As did the selling points of SB110 sound good so does HB 515; like buying a new car, once you drive it off the lot the car does not quite live up to the sales pitch.

There is no other state in the Union that has gone in the direction that HB515 wants to take us. We cannot pick up the phone and call Idaho, Wyoming, Minnesota or any state to ask, “What problems did you run into with this”? Secondly, at the full Commerce Committee briefing, not hearing we had a one-hour briefing from the insurance dept on this bill, I asked a simple question, “How many groups or associations are there in NH and how many might want to join this”? The next question was, to the insurance dept, “how do the insurance carriers feel about this”? The answer to both questions was they did not know nor could anyone else in the hearing answer. Why would we, as a legislature, push through another insurance re-organization before the first has taken affect? How can we accept the “dovetail” argument when we do not know what the problems might be with SB125? We do not know what problems we are going to run into with SB125; but are committed to move quickly to fix any that may arise. We are not going to let it go for 18 months to damage the small group market and small businesses as SB 110 did.

Some of the same group of brokers that supported SB110, as well as, legislators that supported SB110 is supporting HB 515. This includes the house leadership, who did not support SB125, and the governor who supports 515 and in my opinion, does not understand this bill. To us the warning signs are there and caution would be the prudent course of action. We feel that we owe it to the business groups/associations that are interested in this concept to give them the best bill we can, that is our job.

We feel that it is better to retain and study HB515 this year and bring back a “clean” bill next session for full hearings with maximum input from brokers, insurance carriers and business. When a bill circumvents the system there is usually something shady going on behind the scenes.

The way this bill was handled to date just does not pass the smell test; no matter how good the sales job sounds.