Private Insurance

Pleading that sometimes "you have to shut the door," officials of the state Injured Workers Insurance Fund asked a legislative committee yesterday to exempt the state agency from public records and open meetings laws. The request for blanket exemptions, in the form of an amendment to a pending bill, were offered to the Senate Finance Committee by Paul M. Rose, the departing head of IWIF, and the agency lawyer, David Funk. "In a competitive business environment, you have to shut the door sometimes," Funk told the committee.

Gov. Parris N. Glendening has ordered the creation of a task force to review the state Injured Workers' Insurance Fund, after its award of a multimillion-dollar no-bid contract.In a letter made public yesterday, Glendening's chief of staff, Major F. Riddick Jr., disclosed that the task force will be asked to assess the structure of the fund's governing board and the agency's operations.In the Feb. 15 letter to Montgomery Democratic Sen. Ida G. Ruben, Riddick wrote, "Recently, there have been concerns raised relative to several issues including the management of the agency itself."

PARIS -- President Clinton was elected in 1992 promising to give the United States a needed national-health insurance system. The battle that followed pitted advocates of a single-payer state system, on the Canadian or European models, against the private insurance industry, ending in a qualified victory for the latter.Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, wrote in the New York Times a few days ago that the original Clinton proposals "would have limited our choice in doctors, cost millions of jobs and created new bureaucracies and tax increases."

THE HOUSE VERSION of a bill to give children from low- and moderate-income families health insurance costs about the same as Gov. Parris N. Glendening's sweeping plan to extend Medicaid.But philosophically, it is quite different in important and advantageous ways.The governor's plan, which has passed the Senate, would create a new entitlement -- free health care for children and pregnant women in families making up to 200 percent of poverty, or about $32,000 for a family of four.The entitlement would extend to those with access to private insurance, which they could drop and then sign up for the free plan after 90 days.

WASHINGTON -- Patients whose private insurers refuse to pay health care costs would have the right to appeal to an outside panel, under legislation introduced yesterday by Rep. Benjamin L. Cardin, a Baltimore Democrat.Although federal policy requires an external review of complaints for patients in the Medicare system, private companies offer their customers only an internal appeal.An official for the Health Insurance Association of America, whose member firms provide policies covering the health care costs of some 60 million Americans, raised objections to the bill without explicitly opposing it."

YOUR Feb. 25 editorial "Sensible health plan for children" makes no sense. The piece contains misinformation and distortion, and suggests that you have not carefully researched this important subject.The reason health care for uninsured children is a major focus of this year's legislative session is that the federal government has made available to Maryland $60 million a year for five years to provide health coverage for uninsured children, a fact you neglected to mention.This money comes in a 2-to-1 federal grant, so Maryland would pay only $30 million (not the $76 million stated in your editorial)

HOUSE REPUBLICANS in Annapolis have developed an alternative to Gov. Parris N. Glendening's plan to extend government health care to uninsured pregnant women and children. Their proposal makes far more sense. It relies on graduated tax credits to help families afford private insurance, rather than committing taxpayers to the cost of insuring children in perpetuity.The governor wants to extend Medicaid to families with incomes up to 200 percent of poverty -- $32,000 for families of four -- even if they have access to employer-provided insurance.

A FINAL resolution to the long-running Capitol Hill controversy about homeowner overpayments of private mortgage insurance premiums appears to be in sight.Republicans on the Senate Banking Committee have reached a consensus on a reform bill that would offer significant new consumer protections to all homeowners paying for private mortgage insurance (PMI).Besides benefiting from mandatory disclosures about premium costs and the rights of cancellation of insurance, new borrowers nationwide would be guaranteed automatic cancellation of premium payments whenever their equity in their home reached 22 percent.

THE SITUATION sounds familiar. Financial institutions with state charters have depositors' money insured by a private corporation. They fight efforts to switch to the "full faith and credit" protection of federal insurance. It's not needed, they say. Everything is fine just the way it is.That's what we heard in the 1980s from the state's savings and loan operators, who schemed and manipulated their way into a huge scandal that saw dozens of local thrifts declared insolvent, S&L officials and owners sent to prison, taxpayers forced to ante up $100 million and depositors deprived of their money for as long as four years.

Health plan conceals huge tax increaseSen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., is one of the few with the courage and presence of mind to expose the president's health care plan for the gigantic snow job it really is.Here are some facts gleaned from an article in the Wall Street Journal written by Martin Feldstein, former chairman of the President's Council of Economic Advisers. The figures quoted were calculated by Mr. Feldstein and colleagues at the National Bureau of Economic Research:* The hidden tax cost for this largest-ever welfare expansion would top $100 billion -- equivalent to raising personal taxes by nearly 20 percent.