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Mandate
To Cover Mental Health Conditions Still In Play
The Senate is expected to consider SB 5 (Hottinger, R-Newark), a health
care bill that makes minor changes to Ohio’s Small Employer Health
Care Alliance law, when it returns for a lame duck session after the
November election. The Ohio Chamber is very concerned the bill could
be amended on the Senate floor to include a controversial mental health
parity amendment. This mandate would require employers to pay for health
insurance coverage for mental illnesses under their group health care
policies just like they cover physical conditions. The “mental
health parity” mandate could undermine the efforts of many Ohio
employers to control their health care costs.
The Ohio Chamber has a long-standing policy against all health care
mandates. There are several reasons why the Chamber takes this position.
The first is the direct cost impact mandates have on small businesses.
Unlike self-insured companies who are exempt from state regulation,
small businesses absorb the full cost of each new state mandate. These
are often the same businesses that are struggling to pay for health
care coverage for their employees as they face premium increases exceeding
30% per year. Ohio already has 32 separate health insurance coverage
or process mandates. Adding mental health parity to this list will force
more small employers to curtail health care benefits and result in fewer
Ohioans having any health insurance at all.
A second reason for the Chamber’s opposition to health care mandates
is our commitment to the free market. Businesses should be able to decide
what diseases, medical conditions and other benefits they include in
their health insurance coverage. They know best what they can afford
and should have a broad range of options to “tailor” a health
insurance plan to the characteristics of their workforce. Why should
businesses be forced to pay for a benefit that is not likely to be utilized
by their employees or pay the cost of covering a condition(s) that prices
them out of the insurance market?
For these reasons, the Ohio Chamber opposes all health care mandates
and makes no attempt to distinguish or compare medical conditions for
the purpose of deciding what should or should not be a basic benefit.
Our state and federal lawmakers need to do everything they can to reduce
the cost of health care. With the number of uninsured climbing, piling
on more government-imposed health care mandates is the wrong answer
at the wrong time.
To learn more
about this issue, please contact Steve
Warden, Director, Ohio Small Business Council.
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