Health Insurance

Do you need a mandate to force you to buy something you want or need? This question isn't asked by those who support a health insurance mandate, such as Dr. Edward Miller and Scott A. Berkowitz of Johns Hopkins ("Hopkins leaders support health insurance mandate," Aug. 9). The reason we have so many uninsured Marylanders is that health insurance is either too unaffordable or it doesn't offer a good value to those who can afford it. A mandate won't solve either of those problems. Responding to self-interested lobbying groups, well-meaning legislators have mandated that any health insurance sold in Maryland must cover over 60 procedures, something that has dramatically raised the cost of insurance in this state.

Marc Kilmer's piece in the June 13th edition of The Sun ("Maryland should go slow on establishing a health insurance exchange") misses the boat completely on why Maryland needs to move forward on creating a health insurance exchange. Under the leadership of the O'Malley/Brown administration, Maryland has been a consistent leader on health care, taking the state from 44th to 14th in the country in health insurance for low-income residents, and covering over 250,000 parents, children and seniors.

The health care "debate" taking place in this country has two sides, the health insurance industry, who want only to protect their profit margins, and informed people who understand that the profit motive must be removed. Every other country in the industrialized world has come to this conclusion. Only corporate propaganda stands in the way by spreading disinformation about a single-payer system. The best option is simply to expand Medicare to cover everyone. If you want to know more about it, just ask your grandmother!

Doug Mainwaring expressed his belief that it's better for some people to self-insure or to opt out of any medical insurance, presumably those rich enough to underwrite the risks of major medical bills ( "Health reform unfair to self-insured businessman," Jan. 18). He gave his own business as an example of the benefits of going without health care insurance, and he declares that he owes his financial success to not having paid insurance premiums. Mr. Mainwaring rolled the dice on his wellbeing, and fortunately for him, he did not fall victim to serious illness.

Marc Kilmer incorrectly stated in his January 28th letter that health insurance exchanges do not work ( "Md. should not set up health insurance exchange" . A robust exchange, modeled after the success one in Massachusetts, would provide a strong baseline that would provide health insurance to hundreds of thousands of uninsured Marylanders, all the while helping contain cost and provide affordable options to folks that have simply been priced out...

Just 17 percent of Maryland's adult private sector workers went without health insurance in 2010, compared with 22 percent nationally, according to a report put out by the Maryland Health Care Commission . The commission looks at private employers biennially, and found more private sector employees were getting their insurance through work in Maryland though the employers weren't offering insurance more often than the national average --...

Of all the dubious claims made in the editorial "Maryland's health care imperative" (Jan. 27) the idea that the state should move forward on implementing the provisions of the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare) in order to curb rising health care costs stands out as the most unsupportable. This legislation will not hold down health care costs and, in fact, where a similar plan has been tried in Massachusetts, costs to both health care consumers and the state government have increased dramatically.

Americans in almost every state are finding it harder to get basic health services, according to a report released today by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Access to healthcare from 2000 to 2010 has declined in 42 states, especially for the uninsured the study found. Nationally, the share of adults who have not been able to meet medical needs because they can't afford care rose 6 percentage point to 18.7 percent. In Maryland, the number of people who found it too expensive to get care increased 5.1 percentage in the decade to 15.4 percent.

Laid-off Sparrows Point workers and retirees from the steel mill should soon be able to sign up for health insurance through a plan set up in another steelmaking region. Mill owner RG Steel - which stopped benefits Aug. 31 - asked for court approval Thursday to allow the Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel Corporation Retiree Benefits Plan to accept workers and retirees from Sparrows Point and its other facilities. The United Steelworkers union agreed to expand eligibility in the plan, and RG Steel said it doesn't think court approval is necessary, though it asked for it just in case.

Andy Harris wants health insurance from the federal government? I'm shocked! This is the same Andy Harris, a Republican, who just won a seat to Congress from Maryland after signing a pledge to repeal the landmark health-care overhaul pushed by President Barack Obama and the Democrats. He thinks it's a vast conspiracy to socialize medicine. Same guy, right? So what's he doing asking questions about a federal, taxpayer-subsidized health insurance plan at a private orientation meeting for freshmen?