As the General Assembly prepares to reconvene on Wednesday, Carolina Journal’s Dan Way reports on the potential for lawmakers to approve more mandates on insurance policies, which means, of course, higher premiums.
North Carolina insurance policy holders will pick up $10.5 million in additional premium costs if a bill requiring expanded coverage of chiropractic services recommended April 21 by a legislative study committee is approved in the General Assembly’s short session opening this week.
Critics of the health mandate to lower patients’ co-pays for chiropractic services from the current, higher specialist rates say Senate Bill 561 would entice other specialists, such as physical and occupational therapists, to seek similar payment parity. That would shift more costs from individual patients to all insurance consumers.
The chiropractic co-pay parity bill is one of 10 insurance mandates the General Assembly is expected to consider this session.
If state lawmakers pass bills requiring insurance companies to provide that extra coverage, the higher costs could make insurance policies unaffordable for small businesses, and workers could lose their employer-paid policies, opponents of the mandates say. Mandates force insurers to cover specific treatments or services in every policy they sell, making coverage cost more.
These state-imposed mandates are in addition to coverage mandates required by the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare.
“North Carolina has 55 mandates already, just one behind California, 13th most in the country,” said Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina spokesman Lew Borman.
“Passing the mandates currently under consideration would move us into the Top 10 in the country,” Borman said, past California, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Vermont, “driving premiums even higher.”
If all those mandates were passed into law, “We would see the majority of small businesses that are covering employees with health care coverage probably drop their insurance because the insurance companies would have to absorb some of that [cost] and pass some of it on,” said Gregg Thompson, state director of the National Federation of Independent Businesses/North Carolina.
If insurers passed along all the costs, “they would probably lose all of their small business [clients] because it is such an expense,” Thompson said.
