Second-Year Report Card: Lack of Bold Action = Lack of Improvement

Related Links: 2012 Report Card

It isn’t surprising that a year of no bold legislative or executive action to free the Rhode Island economy or education system from its shackles, or to lighten the heavy hand of government, was a year of no significant improvement in the RI Center for Freedom & Prosperity’s annual Report Card on RI Competitiveness.

What changes the Ocean State saw in the report card’s ten major categories came in large part due to changes of the subcategories, a technical change in the Center’s methodology, and tiny shifts that were able to cross a line into a new letter grade.  In 2012, Rhode Island had five grades of F, two of D-, two of D, and one of D+. In 2013, the tally is three of F, four of D-, one of D, and two of D+. (One of the lost Fs was purely a change in the method of ranking states.)

The sheer number of below-average grades does much to explain Rhode Island’s continuing economic decline and population exodus.

“For all the talk last year about the positive legislative steps we supposedly took, the state’s dismal grade point average has barely moved”, said the Center’s CEO, Mike Stenhouse. “We’ve all seen the depressing headlines, but when compiled into a single report, the report card shows how poor public policy is strangling economic opportunities for families in our state.”

The report card organizes 53 national rankings into the following major categories:

  • Tax Burden (D-)
  • Business Climate (F)
  • Spending & Debt (D-)
  • Employment & Income (D-)
  • K-12 Education (D+)
  • Energy (D+)
  • Infrastructure (F)
  • Public Sector (D)
  • Health Care (D-)
  • Living & Retiring in RI (F)

Whether the decision is thoroughly researched or simply based on impressions, these are the categories on which the Ocean State is judged when businesses and individuals make important decisions about their lives and their economic well-being. Having the information all in one place may be discouraging, but it gives those with a vested interest in the health of the State of Rhode Island clear guidelines for what problems must be addressed.

Center Estimates Waste & Fraud in Rhode Island be as High as $185 Million

The release by the Chafee Administration of a redacted report on waste and fraud in Rhode Island’s human services programs failed to provide the total taxpayer dollars discovered by Ken Block’s Simpatico software firm that were spent on illegal or other inappropriate activity; instead the report was limited to examples of impropriety and generalities of findings within the state’s Medicaid and food-stamp program.

Based on a brief analysis of related national findings and anticipated state budgets, the RI Center for Freedom & Prosperity estimates that up to $185 million dollars may be currently wasted in the Ocean State. With planned Medicaid expansion, this total could approach a whopping $221 million in future years, almost three times the amount of the 38-Studios debacle … every year.

The biggest portion of the fraud likely comes from Medicaid abuse. Common estimates of such waste and fraud nationally assume that 10% of related spending applies. In our updated report on the Zero.Zero sales tax initiative, the RI Center for Freedom & Prosperity referred to a U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Government Reform document that uses that number.

Estimates from the federal Department of Health and Human Services, however, put current “improper payments” at 7.1%, with 6.4% as the target.

The governor’s budget document for fiscal year 2014 revises the current estimate of what the state will spend this year on “medical assistance” (i.e., Medicaid) to $1.616 billion, going up to $1.743 billion next year. Using the 2013 estimate puts the range for waste, fraud, and abuse for Medicaid alone at between $114.7 million and $161.6 million.

The other large portion of wasteful government spending in the report pertains to the food stamp program – also known as the “Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program” (SNAP) – which uses electronic benefit transfer (EBT) cards to distribute the funds.

As predicted by a post in The Ocean State Current prior to the report’s release by the Chafee administration, and based on report on government waste that U.S. Senator Tom Coburn (R, OK) published in October, dead people in Rhode Island often receive food-stamp benefits.

Coburn’s report actually provides a low-end, for our purposes, estimating around 3% in “improper payments” nationwide. The more official number from the Department of Agriculture is 3.8%, however the Associated Press reported that Rhode Island’s “error rate” for the food stamp program in 2012 was 7.69%.

Governor Chafee’s revised expenditure for SNAP in 2013 is $298.2 million, recommended to hold steady through 2014. That puts the range for food stamp waste, fraud, and abuse between $11.3 million and $22.9 million.

In summary, our Center estimates that the total amount of criminal and abusive activity in Rhode Island’s current human services programs is in the range of $126 million to $184.5 million.

However the story does not end with today’s figures. With the Governor, Lieutenant Governor, and the Secretary of Health and Human Services opting to support expansion of Medicaid, as provided under the Affordable Care Act, the RI Center for Freedom & Prosperity expects that an additional $36.5 million of taxpayer money will be abused as part of the anticipated $365 million in new Medicaid spending in future years.

This could bring the total amount of waste and fraud up to $221 million per year.

Projo Omits the Real Story of Health Benefit Exchanges

The Providence Journal’s article checking in on the progress of Rhode Island’s ObamaCare health benefits exchange ignores the major policy questions and potential objections that have made the exchanges a subject of controversy across the country.  With the exchange’s executive director, Christine Ferguson, as its only source, the article is little more than a preview press release for an expensive government service that is of dubious origin, questionable promise, and dangerous potential.

Here is a mere sampling of the conspicuous omissions:

  • The article ignores the controversy of more states’ refusing to set up exchanges than agreeing to do so. Oklahoma is leading the way in a lawsuit challenging the authority of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to impose a fee on medium-sized and large employers that do not offer healthcare benefits in states that will have federally run exchanges.
  • The article glosses over the distortion of the employment market caused by the employer mandate. With the threshold of 50 full-time employees before businesses are required by the law to offer healthcare benefits or pay the IRS penalty, the law is creating perverse incentives that are leading employers nationwide to limit workers to part-time status and potentially not to hire them at all.
  • The costs of the exchange and the Medicaid expansion to the state are not mentioned. The initiation of ObamaCare in Rhode Island looks like a windfall of federal dollars for the state, but within a few years, the additional local costs will add strain to the state’s annual struggle to balance its budget. With data from the Kaiser Family Foundation, the RI Center for Freedom & Prospeity estimates that the cost of the Medicaid expansion to Rhode Island taxpayers will be approximately $50 million per year.  When it comes to paying for the exchange itself, Rhode Island may follow Massachusetts’ strategy of charging a 3% fee on top of premiums.
  • The planned expansion of the exchange as a “unified infrastructure” is nowhere to be found. The officials behind Rhode Island’s health benefits exchange are also planning to integrate it with other state subsidies and services, such as welfare and food stamps. The Center has dubbed this strategy a “dependency portal,” because it would potentially create an automatic “on ramp” to dependence on government handouts.
  • The article also ignores the interests on the exchange’s board. In populating the governing board of the exchange, Governor Lincoln Chafee paved the way for expansion of services supplied through the exchange, without appointing any board members who might act as a counterweight to the special interests around the table.

Rhode Islanders deserve a government that treads cautiously when dabbling in such costly and radical changes to the critical services of the health care marketplace.  And they definitely deserve a state-level press corps that exposes government inadequacies and the risks and costs that it incurs.

R.I. Creating an Expressway to Dependency

The Issue. Rhode Island is leading the nation in the advancement of a larger entitlement culture via its planned expansion of social services through a health benefits exchange, a component of the controversial federal healthcare law. When collecting detailed personal financial and household information from individuals seeking health insurance support, the state intends to proactively enroll participants in other state programs for which they are eligible. Will this create and expanded culture of dependency?

Statement from CEO, Mike Stenhouse. “This is an extreme case of misguided public policy. The expansion of government and special interest control over our personal healthcare decisions, along with the culture of dependency being freely advocated by this administration, should be viewed as an assault on our deeply held American value of self-reliance.

“Imagine turning to the RI health benefits portal because your employer cancelled your insurance and finding yourself on a government-created expressway to a life of dependency. Wouldn’t we all be better off, instead, if the state encouraged residents to become independent, productive members of society?”

Related LinksMike Stenhouse discusses the ‘Dependency Portal’ on the Helen Glover radio show … click hereDependency Portal Pieces in Place;

What the Center is calling a “dependency portal.”  The dependency portal is a not-so-hidden goal of Rhode Island’s version of the health benefits exchanges described in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA, commonly known as ObamaCare).

Although the final design has not been developed in specific detail, the idea of the exchanges is to enable healthcare consumers to use a government Web site to review their available options for insurance and to determine their eligibility for public subsidies.  Most likely, a series of Web-based forms will ask the user for a variety of highly personal information regarding health, income, and family circumstances in order to determine what health plans and public assistance amounts he or she is eligible for.

Whether such information will be requested of all residents who seek to use the site or only of those explicitly seeking subsidies remains an open question.

The exchange will become a dependency portal when other forms of public assistance — from food stamps to cash-payment welfare to child-care subsidies — are integrated into the system and promoted to the exchange user based on information that he or she provides while seeking health coverage — perhaps automatically enrolling people with the merest expression of consent.

At a recent press conference, Rhode Island Health and Human Services Secretary Steven Costantino referred to this “hidden element” of the exchanges as “one-stop shopping.”

Why is that bad? As a free market think tank, the Center is certainly not opposed to practices that encourage efficiency and the use of technology to improve the access that customers and clients have to services. Information technology, in particular, has empowered individuals to accomplish easily and inexpensively tasks that once required expert consultants.

From a business perspective, the Internet and the proliferating technologies that use it, now including smartphones and tablets, smooth the path from a potential customer’s initial interest all the way to final purchase.  Technology enhances businesses’ ability to market and sell their products and services, and they seek to accomplish those ends in order to grow their revenue and expand their market share.

That model is not appropriate to government in dispensing taxpayer-funded services.

In the private sector, bundling of services has become commonplace, and it is easy to understand why companies would pursue the strategy.  Think of the merging technologies of television, Internet, and telephone; it makes sense for a company with an advantage in, say, television, to use various marketing techniques, such as reduced-price packages, cross advertising, and one-stop shopping, to gain an edge in other markets.

However, the public clearly has a sense that these methods can go too far.  Indeed, at the turn of the millennium, the federal government sued Microsoft on the grounds that it was hindering competition by using its operating system dominance (with Windows) to gain an insurmountable advantage in the Web browser market (with Internet Explorer).

In the case of government, all of the same incentives exist for the organization to expand its reach.  The difference is that government has three inherent competitive advantages:

  1. In its ability to simply confiscate money to pay for, or at least subsidize, its services
  2. In the fact that the people whom it entices to its services are not paying their full cost
  3. In its control of the marketplace by means of regulation

Over time, government programs are therefore less and less “public services” that taxpayers agree to support through the people whom they elect and more and more bureaucratic offerings that use the enrollment of some citizens as justification for claiming more authority and confiscating more money from others.

One can see evidence of this intention in the process by which Rhode Island’s exchange was initiated.  In the face of (to be mild) public uncertainty about the PPACA, the Democrat president and Congress pushed it through.  It creates financial incentive for states to build the exchanges (by making taxpayers from other states pay for it), and it hands an astonishing amount of policy discretion to the unelected Secretary of Health and Human Services.

In Rhode Island, Governor Lincoln Chafee broke with common understanding of separation of powers in order to create the exchange by means of executive order, committing the state to pay for the site’s maintenance once it is operational.  Similarly, the state executive branch has simply determined to agree to a related Medicaid waiver, expanding free healthcare services in the state and adding to its expenses.  No legislative input; no public hearings; in short, no public statement of agreement with the programs being developed in the people’s name.

As the government exchanges claim increasing shares of the market nationally, unelected state and federal officers will be authorized to determine everything from minimum benefits to price controls to payment schedules.  The board that Governor Chafee appointed to initiate the exchange illustrates that special interests will have an outsized role, as well.

With the addition of other welfare programs to the mix, it will be even more difficult for the people of the state to change course.

What it means for you. Losing control of activities done in the public’s name may not be the most dire consequence of the dependency portal approach.  Rather, the fatal part of the trap is the fast lane to a culture of universal reliance on government and a pervasive sense of entitlement.

Whenever the topic of welfare arises, conversation turns toward those who “know how to work the system” and thus become the fabled “welfare queens.”  For them, incentives toward good behavior have been reduced or reversed, and democracy has devolved into an exchange of political power for handouts.

The real danger of the dependency portal is that it sets up a chute so that previously self-reliant Rhode Islanders will increasingly fall into an entitlement existence.  Why else would the exchanges offer health care subsidies to a family of four with income of $92,200?

Just as technology has simplified tasks that once required expert consultants, the dependency portal will make “working the system” a simple matter of clicking a few buttons.

Tracing the progress of the portal in Rhode Island. RI Health & Human Services Secretary Steven Costantino, Health Benefits Exchange Director Christine Ferguson, and Lt. Governor Elizabeth Roberts describe Rhode Island’s nation-leading steps toward the dependency portal (June 28, 2012):

 

Elaboration on why Rhode Island and the United States should resist the pull toward dependency portals:

RI Center for Freedom & Prosperity first identifies the dependency-portal dynamic as one reason to reject the health benefit exchange and the Medicaid expansion:

The pieces needed to turn the exchange into a dependency portal are being put into place:

RI officials acknowledge intention to implement Medicaid expansion, without any indication of legislative or public input:

Documents related to the dependency portal begin to reveal the direct connection between those pushing the concept and those involved with Rhode Island’s health benefits exchange:

The dependency portal in concert with eliminated work requirements for welfare may mark the return of the “welfare queen” and a “majority coalition” for big-government activists:

Documents. The federal government and national non-profits describe the dependency portal and the related “express lane eligibility”:

Why RI Should Opt Out of Exchanges and Medicaid Expansion

Quick Links: download a printable PDF of this brief here;   go to our Healthcare home page here ; read our policy brief about a Healthcare Freedom Act here;   

News Coverage: GoLocalProv article – good discussion in the comments section

High Cost of State Implementation

The federal government’s healthcare law — the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) — if fully implemented in Rhode Island, will impose a high cost for the Ocean State in terms of budgets, jobs, dependency, and privacy. In upholding the law as constitutional, the Supreme Court alleviated one very narrow area of uncertainty but did nothing to repair problems with the policy.

Rhode Island will experience multiple negative ramifications if a state-based exchange and the Medicaid expansion options are put into practice, including:

  • Unfunded budget costs that Rhode Island does not have the capacity to absorb
  • Job-killing employer mandates and penalties that would otherwise be avoided
  • Increased dependency on government for health care and other services
  • Government intrusion on privacy in the highly personal areas of healthcare and family finances

Despite its lofty claims, PPACA will not lower health care and insurance costs and will do nothing to increase the supply of quality healthcare services in our state. The law will also lead to new federal and state taxes and cost the economy even more jobs.

State officials are already envisioning the exchange as what might be termed a dependency portal. Using information that residents enter for the purpose of determining health program eligibility, the exchange will alert users to a menu of other benefits for which they qualify, expanding Rhode Island’s public welfare system to an unknowable degree.

Policy Recommendation

The RI Center for Freedom & Prosperity recommends that the state of Rhode Island halt its headlong lunge into expensive and intrusive policy changes concocted in Washington, D.C., and join with other states that have taken a more skeptical view of the promises of the poorly vetted health care reform.

  1. Repeal the executive order creating RI’s health benefit exchange and replace it with patient-centered, market-based reforms, as described in the Center’s Healthcare Freedom Act policy brief.
  2. Opt out of the Medicaid expansion program, declining partial federal funding that would increase dependency on publicly financed health care and lead to increased budget deficits.

The Health Care End Game

Within two hours of the Supreme Court’s determination that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) is constitutional, three Rhode Island public officials held a related press conference. Lieutenant Governor Elizabeth Roberts has made health care a focus of her time in office; Secretary Steven Costantino heads the Executive Office of Health & Human Services; and Christine Ferguson is the newly appointed director of the Rhode Island Health Benefits Exchange.

During the conference, the trio promoted the inchoate exchange as more than a Web site for comparing products. Rather, they described what small-government advocates might see as a dependency portal. Based on information that users provide in order to determine eligibility for health premium subsidies, the site would also offer other forms of public assistance and subsidies that they could claim.

The prudence of government’s promoting its services as if they were private-sector products is a matter of legitimate debate. But the idea of a dependency portal does highlight one critical fact: The exchange, and PPACA generally, will expand the size, cost, and scope of state government.

Compounding Government Costs

Much has been made of the federal government’s 100% coverage of direct expenses for expanding Medicaid under PPACA. All childless, able-bodied residents with household income below 133% of the federal poverty level (i.e., individuals below $14,856 in 2012) will for the first time be eligible for health care through Medicaid.

Under the assumption that the state and federal governments will be somewhat aggressive in promoting enrollment, the Kaiser Family Foundation estimates that these new Medicaid recipients in Rhode Island will cost an additional $1.8 billion from 2014 to 2019, or about $301 million per year. However, costs will not be evenly distributed across those years, with increasing participation as time goes on. In 2019, the total cost for these newly eligible Medicaid recipients will be approximately $414.0 million.

The federal aid covering the Medicaid expansion will have phased down from 100% in 2014 to 90% in 2020. Therefore, in the unlikely event that total Medicaid spending does not increase from 2019 to 2020, the annual cost to Rhode Island taxpayers that year will be about $41.4 million. (The RI Center for Freedom & Prosperity inferred this annual total using the ratio of total state and federal spending in 2019 to total state and federal spending for 2014-2019, as provided in Table 4 on page 38 of the Kaiser report.)

But that total doesn’t account for the “woodwork” effect, which suggests that people who are currently eligible for Medicaid but have not applied will do so as implementation of the reform draws attention to the program. In Rhode Island, this population includes:

  • All children under 19 and pregnant women in house-holds at 250% of the poverty level, as well as all parents with children under 18 and household income below 175% of the poverty level.
  • Seniors (over 65) and disabled adults who qualify for Supplemental Security Income (SSI) or have income below the federal poverty level and have limited resources.

The federal government will assist with this new spending at its standard rate, which Kaiser estimates at 53-1/8% for Rhode Island over the six years, leaving the state to cover $30 million of the $64 million tab. (Note that the latest RI Executive Office of Health and Human Services Annual Medicaid Expenditure Report puts the federal contribution “typically” at 52.47%.)

Again, this spending will not be evenly distributed by year. With the same assumptions for 2020 as above, the annual cost to the state at the end of the examined period will be $6.9 million. In total, therefore, the Medicaid expansion portion of PPACA will represent new annual service costs to the Rhode Island taxpayer in the neighborhood of $48.3 million.

A third cost component that must be added to the total is administration. A 2010 Heritage Foundation study found that “administrative expenses add an average of 5.5 percent in addition to total (federal and state) benefit costs, and that, on average, the federal government pays 55 percent of total administrative costs.”

Taking all of these factors into account, the push for expanded enrollment will result in around $452.3 million in annual Medicaid spending. Of that, the State of Rhode Island will be responsible for $58.9 million in 2020. At that time, about one in four Rhode Islanders will be directly dependent on the Medi-caid program for health care.

The good news, from the Supreme Court’s ruling, is that states cannot be forced to participate in the expansion through the threatened loss of all federal Medicaid assistance.

Exchanges: More Costs

Where Medicaid leaves off, at 133% of the federal poverty level, subsidized premiums through the health care exchange will pick up, providing public money to families up to 400% of the poverty level. That’s $92,200 for a family of four, in 2012. The subsidies will come via advance federal tax credits, but there are five major cost factors of concern at the state level.

First, federal assistance toward start-up and operation expenditures for exchanges will end after 2014. Stan Dorn, of the Urban Institute, notes that states will thereafter have to come up with some reliable funding source — perhaps “surcharging insurance premiums; assessing health plans, employers, or individuals; appropriating state General Fund dollars; or otherwise.”

In Massachusetts, as part of its recent state-based health care reform, the exchange charges participating insurers a fee equivalent to 3% of premiums. Writes Dorn, “The insurers then pass on this cost to purchasers of coverage.”

Second, Rhode Island taxpayers will have to subsidize costs, through the exchange, associated with benefits that the state requires plans to offer beyond federally designated “essential benefits.” According to the RI Center for Freedom & Prosperity, Rhode Island leads the nation in health care mandates.

Third, state-based exchanges will be the mechanism for imposing penalties against “large” businesses (those with 50 or more employees) that either do not offer health benefits or that require employees to share more than a federally designated maximum amount of their cost.

Consider a business with 50 employees who work at least 30 hours per week, but that is unable to provide health care benefits beyond its other compensation. If a single employee acquires a subsidy through a state-based health benefit exchange, the employer will be responsible for $40,000 in annual penalties. For many, that will be substantially higher than the costs of hiring an additional employee.

Fourth, PPACA imposes tighter “community rating” standards on the individual and small group markets, within and outside of exchanges. Broadly speaking, in the “small group” market (employers with 100 or fewer employees), Rhode Island’s already-restrictive statutes forbid insurers from varying their premium costs by more than four times. That is, one family plan covering a spouse and children cannot differ by more than four times another such plan. PPACA reduces the differential to three times and limits family types to “individual” and “family.”

Plainly put, community rating lowers prices for plan members who actuarially should pay higher premiums by increasing them on those who should pay lower premiums.

This relates to the exchanges because, if Rhode Island decides to open its exchange to large groups, then the community rating scheme will apply to all such plans in the state for the first time ever. This rule apparently applies even if no insurers utilize the exchange for this purpose.

Finally, state officials’ vision of an expanded dependency portal will produce an unknowable increase in recipients of food stamps, cash payments, and other forms of public welfare whom the exchanges rope in as a bonus feature. These costs will span multiple layers of government and will be compounded to the extent that they require additional expenses to administer and maintain.

None of these five cost drivers applies if the state does not initiate and maintain a health benefit exchange.*

Danger Cubed: More Regulation, Less Freedom, Lost Privacy

Arguably more substantial than the direct financial costs of the Medicaid expansion and health benefits exchange is the danger created through the new authority that PPACA grants to the state and federal governments.

That danger comes first through dependency. Under the Medicaid expansion, 25% of Rhode Islanders will be direct wards of the state, when it comes to health care. Under the state exchange, up to 57% of Rhode Islanders will be eligible for health care handouts. And the expanded menu of the dependency portal will deepen families’ reliance on the state.

The danger comes second through a new ease of regulation. As health benefit exchanges absorb a greater percentage of the industry, local and national bureaucrats will be able to introduce new mandates and requirements not as legislation passed by duly elected members of the General Assembly or Congress, but simply as new requirements in order for plans to qualify for the exchange. Alternatives will be increasingly diffi-cult to procure, and costs will be forced upwards.

The danger comes third through the loss of privacy and financial intrusion. In order to qualify for Medicaid coverage and health care subsidies, Rhode Islanders will regularly have to inform the state about minute details of their lives. Indeed, it is likely that even families that receive no assistance at all will be faced with the same standardized application process.

In this way, two of the most intimate aspects of a person’s life — finances and health — will be collected through a single agency in a single location for the great majority of Rhode Islanders.

Conclusion

For all of this expense and intrusion, the state will not likely experience any reduction in the overall cost of health care, and Rhode Islanders will likely see the quality and availability of the care that they receive worsening. A Beacon Hill Institute study of Massachusetts’ health care reform, after which much of PPACA was modeled, found cost increases across the board — in and out of government, in an out of public assistance programs, and across tiers of government.

The reason, according to the researchers, was that the reform increased the demand for health care services without increasing the supply. The most alarming manifestation of this dynamic appeared in the state’s emergency rooms.

Across the country, there has been a noticeable decline in enthusiasm for exchanges among states that had begun work on them shortly after PPACA passed Congress. North Dakota, New Hampshire, Idaho, and South Carolina are among the states resisting the federal timetable to implement these insurance “marketplaces.” Kaiser Health News reports that, by the end of June, “only 14 states and the District of Columbia have so far passed legislation authorizing the exchanges.”

At Rhode Island Lt. Governor Roberts’s June 28 press conference, the three public officials made the familiar point that the availability of preventative, regular care might reduce the utilization of more-expensive emergency services. To the contrary, with wait times likely to increase for family physicians, and with greater portions of the population accessing subsidies for premiums and other expenses, the savings for which Rhode Islanders are being asked to sacrifice privacy and self-reliance may never materialize.

 

* Whether employer penalties ultimately depend on state-initiated exchanges is likely to be the subject of political dispute and litigation. However, the penalties are triggered by employees’ receipt of premium assistance, and PPACA Sec. 1401, which creates those subsidies, refers to “an Exchange established by the State under 1311.” Sec. 1311 describes state-initiated exchanges, but not federally initiated exchanges. It is Sec. 1321 that empowers the Secretary of Health and Human Services to create a federal exchange for use in a state.

RI Exchange Director does not Understand Free-Markets

Click this link to hear the clip: press conference-wpromentions-clip

At the State’s press conference following the Supreme Court’s decision, WPRO’s Steve Klamkin brings up our Healthcare Freedom Act proposal to Healthcare Exchange Director, Christine Ferguson, who responded by claiming that the current state exchange is already market based.

Ms. Ferguson does not apparently understand what a free-market is. While she and the Governor may believe they are setting up some kind of market-based “exchange”, it is a far cry from what a true free-market exchange would look like:

  • It is not a free-market exchange when consumers are COERCED to buy something
  • It is not a free-market exchange when it LIMITS the # of private companies that are allowed to sell their products on the exchange
  • It is not a free-market exchange when there are over 69 state and federal MANDATES specifying what coverage must be included in insurance products
  • It is not a free-market exchange when provider premiums are subject to strict PRICING LIMITS
  • It is not a free-market exchange when provider reimbursement rates are mandated by a government agency
  • It is not a free-market exchange when a STATE BUREAUCRACY has to be put in place to run it
  • It is not a free-market exchange when it falls under the FEDERAL AUTHORITY of the Health and Human Services department
  • It is not a “free”-market exchange when insurance provider fees and TAXPAYER FUNDING are required to run the bureaucracy to and to subsidize the purchases of some

In summary, the FREE-MARKET is an exchange in and of itself. It needs no funding, no regulations, and no bureaucracy … consumers choose!

Rhode Islanders want to control their own, very personal healthcare decisions, including:

  • the FREEDOM to purchase insurance or not
  • multiple CHOICES when it comes what insurance products are available
  • ACCESS to affordable and quality care

The only way to achieve these goals is to unleash market forces by removing restrictions and regulations and introducing competition and consumer/patient choices. Our Center’s Policy Brief explains in some detail.

Read the entire policy recommendation here.

Go to our Healthcare homepage here …

 

 

 

 

 

Healthcare Exchanges in RI Should be Replaced with a Healthcare Freedom Act

Download a PDF of the complete policy brief here; go to Healthcare home page here

In 2010, Congress passed and President Obama signed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) amid great controversy. Passage of the bill did not resolve the dispute, and the law has been a source of uncertainty for state governments around the country.  Moreover, the Supreme Court’s ruling that the law is constitutional did not resolve the instability:

  • There is a substantial likelihood that PPACA opponents in Washington, D.C., will be able to stymie implementation and funding of the law or even repeal it, depending on who ends up controlling the U.S. House of Representatives, the U.S. Senate, and/or the White House after the 2012 elections.
  • Multiple provisions of the law, notably services defined as “essential,” are left to the whims of the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services and will be readily adjusted by future administrations.
  • With the Supreme Court’s recent decision, a movement will surely begin to pass an amendment to the Constitution of the United States making all or part of the law a violation of the founding document.

Therefore, Rhode Island must take the lead — as it has with pension reform and the Global Medicaid Waiver — in ensuring that its residents maintain access to health care service through the maintenance of choices, control of costs through free-market mechanisms, and confidence in the quality of care provided.

Changing Rhode Island’s current arrangement, vis-à-vis health care, must be a top priority for public officials and engaged citizens, alike. The state leads the country in the number of mandates that it imposes on all health plans within its reach. Partially as a result, only three insurers are willing to operate within its borders, and only one of those offers individual plans for direct sale to consumers.

Policy Recommendation: Enact a Health Care Freedom Act for RI Citizens

While there are many policy reforms to consider, the recommendations in a Health Care Freedom Act will put the Ocean State’s health insurance sector back on a path that produces higher levels of competition, provides more choices for consumers, and shields Rhode Island from current and future federal mandates.

  1. Repeal the governor’s executive order creating PPACA Health Insurance Exchanges.
  2. Apply for a State Innovation Waiver to free RI from certain provisions of PPACA, including exchanges.
  3. Enact a Health Care Freedom Act that would:
    1. Open up competition by allowing interstate sales to permit Rhode Islanders to purchase health insurance plans from approved providers in other states.
    2. Allow an “opt out” provision from the state’s currently burdensome level of health insurance mandates and require insurers to openly display the original mandates not included.
  4. Pass an amendment to the state constitution to prohibit the federal government from ever requiring Rhode Island residents to buy health insurance.
  5. Pass a resolution calling for amendment of the federal Constitution to invalidate PPACA.

Rhode Island faces an important decision: whether or not to continue down the path of creating an exchange as described by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Beyond that, Rhode Island must decide whether to rely on the promises of the legislation’s supporters that such policies serve to correct the problems American citizens face in finding affordable health insurance.

Download a PDF of the complete policy brief here …