Immigrants may lose state health insurance

Thousands of legal immigrants — including hundreds on the Cape — could be cut from state health insurance rolls, making a dent in the commonwealth's vaunted health reform program.

Up to 30,000 immigrants who've held a green card for less than five years were sent letters July 1 saying their coverage under the Commonwealth Care program might be eliminated as of the end of the month. State officials and health care advocates say the ongoing fiscal crisis means the state doesn't have enough money to cover all its programs.

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Health bill could cut costs to businesses Commonwealth Care is a government-subsidized health insurance plan that pays for medical and dental care. Participants pay premiums based on a sliding-scale fee, with the poorest paying no fee.

"They're going to lose their health insurance. They didn't see it coming," said Camila De Oliveira of the Community Action Committee of the Cape and Islands. The organization has enrolled thousands of legal immigrants in the state's new insurance programs that came about as a result of the health reform act of 2006.

Receiving Commonwealth Care benefits allowed many immigrants to go to the doctor for the first time in years, and quite a few found they needed treatment for conditions such as diabetes and cancer, De Oliveira said. "Now their treatment is going to be stopped."

She estimated there are at least 2,000 legal immigrants on the Cape who will be affected, including people from Brazil, Haiti and Jamaica.

Most individuals dropped from Commonwealth Care would be shifted to something called the Health Safety Net and would end up getting their care from already busy community health centers or emergency rooms, said Brian Rosman, research director of an organization called Health Care For All.

"It's definitely a step backward from the progress we've been making," he said.

The closest pharmacy serving Health Safety Net customers is in New Bedford, De Oliveira said.

State legislators have said they need to cut the $130 million in Commonwealth Care benefits for this group of "aliens with special status" because of the budget crisis, Rosman said. The federal government provides no reimbursement for these recent, legal — but non-citizen — residents. Gov. Patrick has come up with a compromise plan of restoring $70 million in benefits that "would at least keep them in the kind of primary care that would keep them healthy," Rosman said.

The compromise is in the state Legislature's hands now, said Richard Powers of the Commonwealth Connector, a quasi-state agency that helps enroll people in insurance plans under health care reform. He said if the compromise funding is approved for September, there will be a gap of at least a month when the immigrants don't have any type of Commonwealth Care coverage and probably will have to be covered by something like the Health Safety Net, which replaces what was formerly known as the free care pool.

"We don't know if it's even going to be approved at all," Powers said. He said Commonwealth Care clients are entitled to 30 days' final notice before their coverage can be pulled.

Samantha Dallaire, aide for state Sen. Therese Murray, said the Senate can't act on the compromise funding until the House takes it up. All revenue bills start in the House, she said. "If they vote it down, it's dead."

How Not to Fix Health Care

FOR THOSE WHO seek health reform that is effective, bipartisan and fiscally sound, the past few days have been unsettling.

First, Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) told Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) that his panel's plan to limit the tax-free treatment of employer-provided health insurance would not pass muster; too many Democrats would object. The ability of employers to offer unlimited health insurance to workers tax-free drives up health costs by promoting over-consumption; it benefits the well-off at the expense of lower-paid workers who are less apt to have insurance and, if they do, receive less value from the tax-free treatment of benefits. President Obama made a mistake during the campaign when he attacked John McCain for proposing to get rid of the exclusion. He is making an even bigger mistake by letting campaign positions be the enemy of good public policy.

Second, Democrats continued their insistence on a public option -- a government-run insurance plan to compete with private insurers -- as essential to effective health reform. Mr. Obama issued what amounted to a public rebuke of his chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, for the apparently heretical act of suggesting openness to an alternative: having a "trigger" mechanism under which a public plan would be established if the private insurance market fails to provide enough competition. The president, from Moscow, restated his support for a public plan, though, thankfully, he continued to avoid drawing a line in the sand. As we have said before, it would be tragic if this issue were to drag down health reform or make it impossible to secure Republican votes. Restructuring the health-care system is risky enough that Democrats would be wise not to try to accomplish it entirely on their own.

Third, a new gimmick has been designed to pretend that health reform is fully paid for. The Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions adopted a measure, endorsed by the Obama administration, to have the government provide long-term care insurance in which workers would be automatically enrolled unless they opt out. Premiums would flow into the system beginning in 2011, but benefits would not begin to be paid out until five years later; consequently, over the 10-year budget window through which the Congressional Budget Office assesses legislation, the program would bring in $58 billion, according to CBO estimates. Thankfully, the committee also agreed to an amendment, offered by Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.), to require that premiums be set at an actuarially sound level -- not so low that the program would end up further draining the federal treasury. Still, the money that flows in during the 10-year budget window will flow back out again. These are not "savings" that can be honestly counted on the balance sheet of reform.

Many With Insurance Still Bankrupted by Health Crises

Health insurance is supposed to offer protection — both medically and financially. But as it turns out, an estimated three-quarters of people who are pushed into personal bankruptcy by medical problems actually had insurance when they got sick or were injured.

And so, even as Washington tries to cover the tens of millions of Americans without medical insurance, many health policy experts say simply giving everyone an insurance card will not be enough to fix what is wrong with the system.

Too many other people already have coverage so meager that a medical crisis means financial calamity.

One of them is Lawrence Yurdin, a 64-year-old computer security specialist. Although the brochure on his Aetna policy seemed to indicate it covered up to $150,000 a year in hospital care, the fine print excluded nearly all of the treatment he received at an Austin, Tex., hospital.

He and his wife, Claire, filed for bankruptcy last December, as his unpaid medical bills approached $200,000.

In the House and Senate, lawmakers are grappling with the details of legislation that would set minimum standards for insurance coverage and place caps on out-of-pocket expenses. And fear of the high price tag could prompt lawmakers to settle for less than comprehensive coverage for some Americans.

But patient advocates argue it is crucial for the final legislation to guarantee a base level of coverage, if people like Mr. Yurdin are to be protected from financial ruin. They also call for a new layer of federal rules to correct the current state-by-state regulatory patchwork that allows some insurance companies to sell relatively worthless policies.

“Underinsurance is the great hidden risk of the American health care system,” said Elizabeth Warren, a Harvard law professor who has analyzed medical bankruptcies. “People do not realize they are one diagnosis away from financial collapse.”