Congress makes reform a priority

By Nicole Lucht

Friday, June 5, 2009 | 3 a.m.

It’s full-steam ahead on the health care reform debate.

Sen. Harry Reid is predicting a bill reforming the nation’s overburdened and expensive health care system by the end of June. Reforming the health care system is also a top priority of President Barack Obama.

Rep. Dina Titus, who represents most of the Las Vegas Valley in Washington, met with the local chambers of commerce at the Paradise Recreation Center May 27.

“Health care (reform) is coming fast and it’s still wide open and I wanted to get input before, not after, the bill is written,” Titus said following the meeting. “I thought going to the chambers of commerce would be the right place to go because they represent small business and it’s such a huge issue.”

Included in the discussion were representatives from the Women’s, Asian, Urban and Latin chambers, as well as the chambers of Las Vegas, North Las Vegas, Henderson and Boulder City. The Laughlin chamber was also there.

“We were really pleased that she took the initiative to reach out to the Las Vegas Chamber and the business community to solicit some input,” said Kara Kelley, CEO of the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce. “This issue, to call it exceptionally complicated, is an understatement. There are going to be many not only difficult choices but, certainly, consequences with whatever happens.”

Henderson Chamber of Commerce Chairman David Dahan said reform “has to be a total collaboration.”

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce disputes the Census Bureau’s report that 46 million Americans are without health insurance as misleading.

Almost a third of those uninsured are people who have a high enough income to afford health insurance, but for varying reasons choose not to purchase it, Bruce Josten, executive vice president of government affairs for the chamber, said in a statement to the Senate Finance Committee May 5.

“There will be many proposals designed to prevent these individuals from opting out of the system and to force them to shoulder their fair share of the expenses of providing medical care to the nation,” he said.

Eleven million of those without insurance are eligible for government-subsidized or free insurance, but because of a slow bureaucracy, they haven’t been signed up yet.

And then about 10 million of the uninsured are people without U.S. citizenship.

Employers provide 130 million workers with health insurance and pay over $500 billion annually, Josten said.

“Employers have been great innovators in health care, and many reforms we have led the way on, have kept the unsustainable rising costs of health insurance from reaching the breaking point,” he said.

He cautioned against creating a mandate on employers to provide health insurance for their employees. Most small businesses simply cannot afford to, he said.

“The push for a coverage mandate on employers is an ideological one, not a pragmatic one, and should not be viewed as a way to cover the uninsured,” Josten said.

Kelley said there needs to be a balance of competing goals: Quality care, affordability and consumer choice.

“To the extent possible, health care delivery should be through the private sector and market-based pricing, not government mandated pricing,” she said. “Great innovations happen through the private sector and we believe great innovations are going to be needed throughout the process of health care reform.”

The chamber is also very concerned about the proposal to mandate all employers — even those who employ few workers — to provide health insurance to their employees. “We don’t believe it should be employer mandated because we believe there should be many choices and it should be consumer-driven options,” Kelley said. “I think the issue of portability is very, very important. The fact that employees get locked into a job because their health insurance is tied to it — I don’t think that’s good for the workforce. That doesn’t allow employees who may want to endeavor into some type of entrepreneur opportunity.”

It could, she said, stagnate innovation and worker productivity. One of the things Congress should consider is tax equity between group and individual health insurance markets.

“There needs to be an individual market, but the fact that employers can deduct the cost of health care but individuals cannot certainly does not treat those two markets fairly,” she said.

The meeting Titus called with the chamber representatives started with hearing about some of the problems businesses are facing.

“The main thing that came out of it was that small business wants to provide health insurance, but they need some help doing that,” Titus said. “So, now we’re moving down that road to figure out what kind of help we can provide.”

Nicole Lucht covers health care, workplace and banking issues for In Business Las Vegas and its sister publication, the Las Vegas Sun. She can be reached at 259-8832 or at [email protected].