Health Insurance

You're headed for a summer villa in the English Lake Country. You're packing the bags for a week at the beach. You're getting ready to introduce the children to Paris.Seasoned travelers always remember to bring toilet paper to Asia, detailed road maps to Cancun and an extra water supply for California's Mojave Desert. But has anybody thought about packing a health insurance card?In an era of managed care, when health maintenance organizations dictate who you see and when and what for, and refuse to pay up when you break the rules, now may be the time.

So, you got pink-slipped. Don't let your health insurance slip, too. Here are options to keep yourself insured while you look for a new job: * Enroll in a spouse's workplace plan. You can do so even if it isn't open enrollment season. * Maintain coverage under your old employer for up to 18 months through the federal Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act. Premiums will be much higher because you'll be paying the full cost. COBRA applies to employers with 20 or more workers.

WASHINGTON -- For years, it has been one of the few issues that liberals and conservatives in Congress could agree on: continuing and expanding a state-federal partnership to provide health insurance for children, mainly those of the working poor. So when senators of both parties reached a compromise this summer and then beat back efforts by House Democrats to triple the program's budget, the measure's many GOP backers thought they had a political victory that President Bush could embrace.

If you're considering taking a job with a small employer, take a hard look at the benefits: Health insurance might not be included. A March study from the U.S. Government Accountability Office found that the number of employers offering coverage has declined, particularly among small businesses. Last year, 60 percent of employers with between three and 199 workers provided insurance, down from 68 percent five years earlier. It's not that small businesses are stingy. But because they have fewer employees to contribute premiums, the insurer takes on more risk, which drives up the cost for the business or workers (or both)

WASHINGTON -- Maryland would get less than it needs for homeland security, health insurance for poor children and cleaning up the Chesapeake Bay under President Bush's budget proposal, critics said yesterday. While the proposal delivered to Congress yesterday would increase federal grants for education, health care and other programs in Maryland from $5.6 billion to $5.8 billion, members of the state delegation said it shortchanges schools, medical research and local firefighters. They said they would work to boost funding for the State Children's Health Insurance Program, the No Child Left Behind Act and bay clean-up efforts.

WASHINGTON -- Residents in and around the nation's capital woke up one recent morning to the sort of bad news that we like to think doesn't happen in America: A child died from lack of dental care. Deamonte Driver, a seventh-grader in Prince George's County, died Feb. 25. Bacteria from an abscessed tooth had spread to his brain, doctors said. Two operations and eight weeks of care and therapy failed to save him. Total cost: more than $250,000. His mother, Alyce Driver, worked at low-wage jobs.

Maryland won't challenge a federal court decision striking down the state's "Fair Share" health care act, ending a two-year effort to force Wal-Mart Stores Inc. to pay more for employee health care, Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler said yesterday. Gansler - who made the announcement standing alongside representatives of the O'Malley administration, the comptroller's office and labor groups that pushed for the first-of-its-kind law - said he concluded that an appeal was likely to fail.

Like the thousands of Howard County residents who are without health insurance, Carol Ray cannot afford preventive health care or visits to the dentist. A mother of two teenage boys, Ray, 45, said her $25,000-a-year secretarial job at a small extermination company can cover her apartment's rent and utilities and other necessities, but not private health insurance. "I'm not looking for handouts. I'm just looking for something I can afford," Ray said about finding insurance. The Ellicott City resident said she believes she has found affordable coverage as part of the Howard County government's initiative to provide health insurance for every low-wage resident in the county.

Insuring children really does pay off As pediatricians, we see the human benefit of the State Children's Health Insurance Program every day for the patients and families who come to our clinics. We were therefore dismayed to learn of the Bush administration's recent attempts to restrict the program ("U.S. rules threaten aid to children," Aug. 23). Limiting eligibility for insurance and increasing waiting periods for care are barriers that prevent children from getting the health care they need.

WASHINGTON -- As the National Governors Association began its winter meeting, 13 governors expressed alarm yesterday that they were about to run out of federal money for a popular program that provides health insurance to children. They appealed to Congress and the Bush administration for swift action to protect hundreds of thousands of children who could lose benefits. The full association is poised to endorse that appeal. In a letter to Democratic and Republican leaders of Congress, the 13 governors said that "health insurance for some of our states' most vulnerable citizens is in jeopardy."

Last week's health care reform vote in the Senate Finance Committee brought Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe on board - even if she only stays on the boat until the next bend in the river. Ms. Snowe opposes the public option but expresses strong interest in a "trigger" that would allow for such a government-run option if the health insurance industry does not change in response to reform legislation. In that case, she said, "you could have the public option kick in immediately." In short, Ms. Snowe supports the country having a Plan B. The loudest advocates of the public option usually present it as a health plan that would be available to any American, any time.

Harris offers wrong fix for health system Dr. Andy Harris has made a misdiagnosis of the underlying problem in U.S. health care, and his suggestions for treatment are off ("Reform, not overreach," Oct. 6). He's shared a misconception that competition among insurers would bring down the cost of health care insurance. That was the original concept before the industry went to a for-profit model. Since that time, the annual cost of care for individuals and families has risen steadily. The 2009 Kaiser Family Foundation's annual survey of health benefits notes that despite these hard economic times and the focus on health insurance costs, the average annual premiums for employer-sponsored health insurance are $4,824 for single coverage and $13,375 for family coverage - a 5 percent increase from last year alone.

Senate Democrats pushing health care legislation received a boost Wednesday from congressional budget experts, who estimated that a bill being debated by the Senate Finance Committee would substantially expand coverage and lower the federal deficit. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office calculated that the legislation, written by Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), would cost $829 billion by 2019. But because that tab would be offset by spending cuts elsewhere and by new revenue, the panel's health care bill actually would lower the deficit by $81 billion over the next decade - and potentially even more in later years - the budget office concluded.

As discouraging as it was to watch certain members of the Senate Finance Committee treat the concept of affordable health insurance coverage as America's own Bolshevik Revolution last week, hope for a modicum of common sense in the U.S. Congress springs eternal. The battle over the public option isn't over yet, as there is at least one more card to play. As House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has already promised, no matter what comes out of the full Senate, the health care reform bill approved by the House of Representatives will contain the public option.

To change something that isn't what you'd like into something else is not necessarily to "fix" it, if that something else comes laden with significant new unwelcome negatives. That, in a nutshell, is the problem with the proposed remodeling of our health care system. As Grace-Marie Turner of the Galen Institute put it on my show this week: "Congressional leaders and the White House are pushing through their aggressive agenda to remake our health sector as though they are oblivious to the fear and outrage outside the Beltway and the pleas of the American People to apply the brakes."

Despite a decrease in home values last year, Maryland remains the richest state in the nation, according to U.S. Census data released Tuesday. The state's median household income for 2008 was $70,545, an increase of about $1,500 from the previous year and slightly higher than New Jersey's figure ($70,378). Maryland also had the highest median household income in 2007 and has been among the national leaders for much of the decade, with Howard, Calvert and Montgomery counties all regularly ranking among the top 10 wealthiest counties in the nation.

COLLEGE PARK - - A University of Maryland arena built for cheering Terps basketball rocked instead Thursday to mentions of "the public option" and "pre-existing condition," as President Barack Obama sought to harness the energy of youthful supporters to push for health care change. A largely student crowd of more than 12,000 raised an earsplitting roar when the president stepped onto the floor of the Comcast Center shortly before noon, coatless and with his sleeves rolled up. It was the first campus stop on Obama's campaign-style health care tour, and he tweaked his stump speech in an effort to make medical insurance relevant to a university audience.

FAIRFAX, Va. -- President Barack Obama says he wants an honest debate over health care. I would take his plea more seriously if he gave the following speech: "My fellow Americans, today I propose a program to help those among us who, because of an existing serious illness, do not qualify for health insurance. I do not blame insurance companies for being unwilling to write policies for existing illnesses. Forcing the companies to cover already sick people would be wrong because it would not be true insurance.

Tavon Stokes, 22, is seldom sick and keeps in shape by running and walking. He figures he has no need to see a doctor. So even though the full-time sales clerk from Baltimore could get health insurance from his employer, RadioShack, Stokes figures he can find far better ways to spend his cash. Health problems "aren't coming up yet, so it's not much of a priority," he said. In the debate over health care reform, Stokes and his peers are known as "invincibles," strong and healthy young adults who have no experience with wallet-crippling illness and feel they have no need for coverage.

In the six months since President Barack Obama's health forum, hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent encouraging Americans to support or oppose reform. Meanwhile, 14,000 Americans per day have lost their health insurance. And we're no closer to fixing a "sick care" system that threatens the health security and financial future of all Americans. We must not lose sight of the need to cover the 47 million uninsured Americans. But merely giving them publicly funded insurance won't help them - or the other 255 million Americans - get well, stay healthy and spend less.