When they do, The Business Council expects to counter with its own proposals for fundamental health-insurance policy changes, said Elliott Shaw, director of government affairs for the Council.
"We expect the unions and their Working Families Party to ignore the federal court ruling and the almost universal opposition to this idea everywhere from editorial pages to serious policy discussions," Shaw said. "So we plan to offer common-sense alternatives focused on reducing costs for employers and individuals and giving consumers the flexibility and cost-cutting potential of consumer-driven health care."
Shaw said the Council's proposal will likely focus on several policy ideas:
Mandate reform: New York's health-insurance premiums are inflated by a range of mandates—laws that require health insurance to cover treatments for certain ailments or visits to certain practitioners.
A 2003 report released by the Employer Alliance for Affordable Healthcare estimated that mandated benefits increased health insurance premiums by a net amount of 12.2 percent or an increase in single coverage of $444.57 a year and in family premiums of $1,066.37 a year (based on estimates done in other states for similar mandated benefits).
Since then, no mandates have been removed, and several have been added. And a May 2004 analysis by the New York State Conference of Blue Cross and Blue Shield Plans showed that state lawmakers had proposed 80 new health-insurance mandates.
"Freedom Health Plans" and health savings accounts (HSAs): The Council believes Albany should permit consumers to use health savings accounts (HSAs) in combination with less costly, high-deductible insurance policies. The state Senate has supported legislation to make this possible in a proposal it calls "Freedom Health Plans."
HSAs would let individuals set aside pre-tax dollars for health-care purchases. This federally supported policy approach encourages consumers to make more informed choices about their health care and to focus more on health-care costs. But the vast majority of New York State employers that buy traditional managed care coverage for their workers and their families are not allowed to do this under state insurance law.
Increased individual independence and responsibility: Shaw said the Council will continue reviewing a 2006 Massachusetts law that changes health-insurance policy in some fundamental ways. That law includes some "promising concepts," Shaw said.
The Massachusetts law requires individuals to buy health insurance coverage, imposes a new assessment on some businesses that offer no health-insurance benefits, and creates a new entity called a health insurance "connector" to link individual and businesses with a range of health insurance products.
The setback for unions on their latest mandate scheme came in mid-July, when a federal judge in Baltimore overturned Maryland's "Wal-Mart bill." The court ruled that the law violated the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) by requiring the company to handle benefits in Maryland differently than it does in other states.
ERISA is a federal law that sets minimum standards for most voluntarily established pension and health plans in private industry to provide protection for individuals in these plans.
The Maryland law was narrowly drafted to require WalMart to spend 8 percent of its payroll in the state on medical benefits, or pay the difference in taxes.
After sustained advocacy by The Business Council, state legislators in Albany this year declined to enact an especially draconian variation of the WalMart bill as well as some slightly less offensive variations that unions and their Working Families Party floated in a desperate end-of-session effort to persuade lawmakers to enact something.
The worst of the bills (S.7090-Spano/A.10587-Gottfried) would impose penalties on employers with 100 or more employers, and would require a minimum payment of $3 per hour per employee on benefits. Last-minute variations reportedly increased the minimum number of employees at targeted companies and decreased the mandated spending on benefits.
The Council strongly opposed the notion that society's problems stemming from high health-insurance costs can be addressed with policy follies explicitly designed to drive those costs dramatically higher for countless employers, Shaw noted.
The Council also cited a study by a University of Kentucky economist that found that the worst of the bills would eliminate at least 69,000 jobs in New York State, and possibly as many as 100,000 jobs.
"New York's employers and taxpayers already suffer from high health-insurance costs that already undermine job-creation in New York State," Shaw said. "The last thing they need is a new health-insurance mandate and a punitive new tax that would drive those high costs even higher."