March 3rd, 2009

Reports the Associated Press:

Gov. Ed Rendell’s proposed assessment on health insurers faces long odds in the state Senate, a key lawmaker told a top Rendell aide on Monday.

Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Jake Corman, R-Centre, said some insurers will see it as a tax that will drive them out of the state or that they will simply pass on to consumers.

Any increase in premiums could possibly swell the ranks of the uninsured at a difficult economic time when people are unable to afford higher costs, he told Public Welfare Secretary Estelle Richman at a hearing on the state’s rising social-services costs.

…

Richman told Corman that she and state Insurance Commissioner Joel Ario are working with insurers to find ways they can pay the 2 percent assessment without raising premiums. She said many other states charge similar assessments and that she is committed to meeting with lawmakers to respond to their concerns.

…

 Medicaid is one of the state’s biggest costs, consuming more than one-sixth of the approximately $60 billion in federal and state funds Pennsylvania plans to spend this fiscal year.

Richman told Corman that the assessment would be enforced broadly against health insurers in the state as a way to fill a hole in the funding for the state’s 1.9 million Medicaid enrollees.

Read the entire article at the York Daily Record.