Constituent services Sen. Conway style
A seemingly minor bill introduced by Sen. Joan Carter Conway dominated debate in the Senate Monday night.
The measure would have expanded insurance coverage of costly in vitro fertilization in one very specific instance: when the man can’t produce sperm because of a condition called non obstructive azoospermia AND the woman has ovarian hyper stimulation syndrome.
Sen. Andrew P. Harris, a Baltimore County Republican, was skeptical. A doctor by training, Harris told his colleagues the medical conditions outlined in the legislation are so narrowly crafted that the bill most likely “only covers one person.”
Conway (D-Baltimore City) argued that the analyst who wrote the fiscal note attached to her bill (SB 27) estimates one percent of Maryland couples could suffer from the combination of symptoms required to trigger coverage. But Conway said she introduced the measure after receiving a request from one couple who lives in her district.
“It is a constituent who had a problem,” Conway said after the floor debate. “I wrote it for that one person who brought it to my attention.” Conway won’t name the couple – at least for now. She promised to get back to us after checking with them.
The bill failed final passage on a 23-23 vote with Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller abstaining. But it could still re-emerge. Sen. George Della (D-Baltimore City) asked that the bill be reconsidered on Thursday.
It’s unclear what will change between now and then. After the session Miller said that he abstained because he was unfamiliar with the legislation, but he also seemed wary based on the floor debate. “My personal belief is that if somebody is going to receive sperm from somebody else, then they can pay for it,” Miller said.
We’d like to add here that Sen. James Brochin (D-Baltimore County) expressed an overall distaste for mandating insurance coverage for procedures that are not medically necessary. He pointed to a 2002 column by the Sun’s Jay Hancock that outlines how such mandates can drive up health care costs.
We’ve added the Hancock column after the jump.
** UPDATE: Several have noted in the comments that Sen. Conway opposes efforts to allow direct wine shipping in Maryland, an issue recently covered by Julie Bykowicz.
Copyright 2002 The Baltimore Sun Company
All Rights Reserved
The Baltimore Sun
March 20, 2002 Wednesday FINAL Edition
SECTION: BUSINESS, Pg. 1C
LENGTH: 896 words
HEADLINE: Legislated health benefits cause loss of essential care
BYLINE: Jay Hancock
BODY:
APPARENTLY deciding Maryland needs more people without health insurance, the legislature forced medical plans last year to cover colon cancer tests and children's hearing aids, as well as slimming surgery for fat people.
This term, the General Assembly is thinking about compelling payment for meningitis vaccines and mental health "crisis" care at home, as well as expanding obligatory coverage of in-vitro fertilization and podiatry.
Other items added to the mandatory medical buffet in recent years include wigs for cancer patients, bone-density and prostate-cancer screening, contraceptives, alcoholism treatment and surgical breast reconstruction.
Maryland leads the nation in this kind of duress, which is well-intentioned but swells the legions of the uninsured as certainly as water flows downhill.
Imagine if the General Assembly allowed sales of only one kind of car: a buffed, loaded, eight-cylinder Cadillac, to use an analogy loved by the enemies of mandates. Fewer people could afford to drive.
By forcing insurers to offer only Cadillac health plans, the legislature makes medical care similarly pricey and out of reach.
About 800,000 Marylanders lack health care coverage, and the legislature at least pretends to care. So why does Annapolis keep making it harder for people to get insurance?
When it comes to heating bills and telephone tolls, the Assembly is fussily sensitive about consumer costs. So how come legislators willfully keep cranking up the price of medical coverage?
The requirement for prostate cancer screening accounts for $38 of the yearly cost of a typical policy that is subject to the Maryland rules, according to a study last year for state regulators by the consultant William M. Mercer Inc.
Contraceptives cost $10. Insurance payments for "morbid obesity" surgery amount to $26 a year of the typical policy's cost. In-vitro fertilization comes to $17, and mental health and drug- and alcohol-abuse treatments account for $265 per year, according to the Mercer study.
Maryland has about 40 legislatively mandated health insurance benefits, more than any other state. Pennsylvania and Delaware have fewer than 20. Add up Maryland's mandates and they comprise $814 of the cost of a typical non-HMO group plan, says the Mercer study.
That's 14 percent of the cost of an average policy, Mercer calculated, and it could be even higher. A few years ago, the General Accounting Office figured health insurance requirements accounted for up to 22 percent of Maryland's medical claims costs, and the menu of required coverage is even longer now.
However measured, these expensive decrees price people out of the market. Extrapolating from Congressional Budget Office research on the relationship between medical costs and the uninsured, we can figure that the elimination of medical mandates would add at least 12,000 - and probably a lot more - uncovered Marylanders to the insurance club.
You can imagine how the insurance commandments are handed down by Annapolis. Doctors, hospitals and other practitioners form the core constituencies. Patients supply compelling stories. Legislators figure a few more dollars paid by business, which finances most medical care and whose pockets are known to be bottomless, won't hurt anybody.
And so the mandates menu grows.
In the real world, the higher premiums generated by mandates cause many companies to stop offering health insurance altogether. Instead of being insured for cancer wigs and morbid obesity surgery, their workers aren't covered for anything. Is that an improvement?
The most perverse aspect of Maryland's mandate mania is this: Mandates drive up the cost of health insurance precisely for the companies that can least afford it. Large employers that are self-insured - those that bear their own risk for medical claims and could best afford the mandates - are exempt because they are regulated federally, not by the state.
The medium-sized and smaller companies are left to bear the mandate burden.
"The people who are damaged by this don't appear in the halls of the state legislature," says Robert Moffit, a Heritage Foundation analyst who testified last week in favor of a Maryland bill that would enable the sale of a few no-frills, no-mandate health insurance policies. Moffitcalls Annapolis' mandates mongering "a kind of raw training in special-interest group politics."
All of the Maryland-required procedures help people and sometimes save lives. But that doesn't mean they should be required by law. Are they cost-effective? Subject to abuse? It doesn't seem to matter.
Many mandates are luxuries in a state with 800,000 uninsured people. It is embarrassing to lose your hair to chemotherapy, but when you have cancer it's not your biggest problem. Deaf children should be helped, but it is not too much to expect the parents who love them and brought them into the world to scrimp and sacrifice for a hearing aid.
If workers demand certain medical coverage in sufficient numbers, then employers will offer them without being forced. If disease-screening tests save more than they cost by catching early illnesses, insurers will cover them voluntarily.
If not, maybe patients should pay. Let's worry first about covering everybody for appendicitis and broken legs. We can worry about in-vitro fertilization later.
LOAD-DATE: March 20, 2002
Comments
Even when measures like this don't cost anything... they still cost something.
No.
And NO! to every measure of the sort that have contributed to the morass that legislation and health insurance regulation has become.
Again Ms Conway... NO!
Posted by: MrRational | February 16, 2010 8:48 AM
Health insurance is for your health not your happiness! Couples should not expect the ratepayers to pay for you to reproduce.
This my friends is YOUR responsibility. Not all the other rate payers. Health insurance is not a welfare program!
Posted by: Voters Ignoraance | February 16, 2010 9:18 AM
OMG, first the mail-order wine bill and now making them waste all Monday night talking about some dude's sperm! JCConway is a nightmare!! Where is her district?
Posted by: mjb | February 16, 2010 10:38 AM
Maybe Ms. Conway would be better served by allowing consideration of the wine shipping bill - which the majority of state residents, not to mention her fellow legislators, back - instead of worrying about helping JUST TWO of her constituents with a narrowly tailored bill.
Posted by: TJC | February 16, 2010 11:03 AM
Providing hearing aids for infants and small children is important. I have two children who need them, and the cost for two sets was almost $8000. Should parents be expected to scrimp and save, for years possibly, while their child misses the little development milestones such as learning to speak ? Why should something so obviously medically necessary not be covered ?
Insurance companies refuse to cover this, even for a 6 month old, I think because they know that people will do whatever they can to help their child. It's a form of emotional and logical blackmail. They don't deny help for the greater good of providing more coverage as has been suggested, they do it to improve the bottom line and to line their own pockets. Please don't insult us with talk about "Cadillacs" and jibes at overweight people...
I have what I'm told is a "very good" plan, but it doesn't cover hearing assistance for children. In my case, even the MD law was no help because my plan falls under ERISA (hence, they have total immunity from state laws and lawsuits, seriously, look it up!). Ironically, they will cover the more expensive ($40k) implant devices, but these are not appropriate usually for kids. Perhaps the older executives need those, so they negotiated to cover the $40k operation for themselves with the rest of us paying for their needs ?
Citizens, or "consumers" as you prefer to call us, don't have any real power to negotiate this sort of coverage with insurance companies or employers. We take what we are offered. Without some legislation to help in these cases, we are at the mercy of the insurance middle-men, and in many cases, it's our childrens lives at stake.
Posted by: Dave T | February 17, 2010 8:47 AM