Insurance Plan

Like many recent graduates, Garrett Rooney didn't buy health insurance after finishing college. Having never been sick "with more than a sniffle," he figured he could do without insurance before starting work as a software engineer two months later. But then Rooney was diagnosed with an aggressive case of Crohn's disease, an inflammation of the bowel. After rounds of tests, medication and life-saving surgery, his health improved. But the ordeal left him with nearly $50,000 in medical bills.

Dissatisfied with the Carroll school board's health insurance proposal, the associations representing teachers, custodians and other district workers will place a counterproposal on the table at 4:30 p.m. today."

High-ranking Maryland lawmakers and CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield, the region's largest insurer, outlined yesterday a $1.6 billion proposal for near-universal health care coverage that would require state residents to have insurance and employers to provide it. The legislation is the latest attempt to help a large segment of Marylanders who don't have health insurance - more than 760,000, or 14 percent of the population - which puts their personal and...

Health care insurance reform may be an idea whose time has come, but it is not a new idea. Nor is it an American idea. National health insurance has existed in Europe since the late 1880s, when it was put in place in response to pressure from an activist labor movement. Germany was the first country to have a national health insurance plan, and the other European countries followed.As this country moves forward in the examination of our latest health insurance reform proposal, it is helpful to look at the history of this effort in the United States.

On July 1, a new state board will meet to begin assembling a program to provide affordable health insurance for those who have trouble getting coverage because of medical problems. The new program is to begin operating July 1, 2003. "It's an extraordinary amount of work to do in a year," said Donna Imhoff, deputy state insurance commissioner who is overseeing the initial groundwork for the insurance plan. After several years of failed efforts to reform the state's system of dealing with the difficult-to-insure, the General Assembly approved the Maryland Health Insurance Program this year.

Imagine one morning you're craving something sweet, so you stop by the corner doughnut shop. Turns out the wait is half an hour, the clerk is rude and, when you finally get it, the doughnut is stale. Would you buy doughnuts there again? Of course not. Yet, every day, millions of Americans put up with just that kind of service in their physicians' offices. And they keep going back. Anyone who has visited a primary care doctor lately knows the drill: You show up on time, only to wait 45 minutes or even an hour.

Some of the most powerful players in the American home mortgage market believe that they can help homebuyers keep their homes and stay out of foreclosure - even when they unexpectedly lose their jobs or get sick and can't work. They have begun grafting onto mortgages low-cost and no-cost insurance policies that provide anywhere from six to nine months of loan payments after an involuntary job loss. In the case of one giant firm, the insurance plan will also extend to income losses caused by accidental injuries or sicknesses that render homeowners unable to perform their jobs.

The Impact: How three households confront health coverage decisions They hope options include dentist For Bryan Butler, the financial reward of his job is not the paycheck as much as the health care benefits. "It's not like we make great salaries, and we work kind of long hours. The benefits have always been important and they are pretty good," says the 42-year-old educator with the Maryland Cooperative Extension in Carroll County. He pays about $212 a month for health insurance for himself, his wife, Karen, and their four children, ages 9 through 13. It would cost three times that much if he had to buy insurance on his own, Butler figures.

Jerry Bailey can look back on a Hall of Fame jockey career that featured 5,892 victories but also the searing memory of 17 fractures, including a broken back, jaw and collarbone, and several busted ribs. Yet Bailey considers himself lucky. He never sustained an injury that kept him off the track more than several months. And unlike many jockeys, he could afford disability insurance designed to fill the gap between what riders need after life-altering accidents and what they receive from racetrack policies.

Stabilizing Maryland's unemployment system is crucial to the state's economy and business community. The Maryland Chamber of Commerce appreciates the O'Malley administration's focus on this important issue. While the administration's proposal has some merit, the Maryland Chamber disagrees with The Sun's recent editorial ("Expanding benefits is worth the price," Dec. 21). Deferring more than $80 million in unemployment insurance tax increases and expanding benefits to access $126.8 million from the federal government sounds appealing.