Editorial: The coverage gap

Tuesday, March 6, 2007 | 7:06 a.m.

At a time when states across the nation are working to provide health care coverage for residents who don't have it - including most, or all, children - Nevada lawmakers have proposed legislation that would provide coverage for 12,000 people.

A story by the Las Vegas Sun on Sunday reported on a plan offered by Assembly Democrats that seeks to provide health care coverage for 5,000 lower-income employees of small businesses, 1,000 working pregnant women and 6,200 children at a cost of about $15 million a year.

But the proposal would cover only a fraction of the 450,000 Nevadans who currently have no health insurance. Meanwhile, such states as California and Massachusetts are working toward providing coverage for nearly all residents - and doing so under the guidance of Republican governors. We noted in a previous editorial that at least 11 other states are working toward similar universal coverage, or at least coverage of all children.

Nevada Assemblywoman Sheila Leslie, D-Reno, told the Sun's J. Patrick Coolican that lawmakers considered coverage for all children but "the price tag was huge." With $3.8 billion in projected transportation needs and funding for all-day kindergarten still needing to be determined, lawmakers say they don't think there is political will to also pursue universal coverage for Nevada's working poor.

Legislators also told the Sun that such states as Massachusetts, Maine and Vermont can afford to provide widespread coverage because much of the funding comes from reconfiguring state Medicaid money. Nevada's Medicaid program serves about 200,000 residents - small, by national standards, and one reason that the state has hundreds of thousands of residents without health insurance.

The mistake Nevada legislators are making is assuming that Nevadans aren't being asked to pick up the tab as long as lawmakers don't insist on providing comprehensive health coverage. But people who don't have coverage use hospital emergency rooms when they become ill. That is the most expensive type of medical care, and the costs of treating those who cannot afford to pay is transferred to those who can through higher medical costs overall.