As Sometimes a well intentioned bill is changed just enough to make it a bill that is impossible to support. That happened in the Iowa House when HF 2790, which was intended to help small businesses with the high cost of insurance, was transformed into a bill that could hurt most small businesses in Iowa.

In 1991, Iowa law created a separate group health insurance market for small employers (2-50 workers). Policies had to be sold and rated using these guidelines: 1)basic premiums must reflect statewide experience, and 2)annual changes to a specific business’s premiums were limited in order to spread the effect of individual costly illnesses among all Iowa small businesses.

All legislators realize that small businesses are suffering under the burden of skyrocketing health insurance costs. Unfortunately, the solution to this problem is not as obvious. Most of the legislators I know came into the session committed to assisting small businesses with their health insurance costs.

For that reason, a bipartisan group of legislators has been working to reach consensus on a solution. The answer seemed to be to allow associations to create a health insurance pool for their members. However, after further study, there was fear that associations would cherry-pick the healthiest businesses and refuse membership, and thus insurance, to those businesses with less healthy employees.

The result would have been disastrous for the small businesses left out. Because they would have the least healthy employees, they would see their insurance rates go through the roof. This could lead to the collapse of Iowa’s small business market, making health insurance for many Iowa small businesses unavailable at any price.

The bipartisan group reached a compromise: to authorize a pilot project to test the effectiveness of association insurance pools and their effect on the small business group insurance market overall. The pilot project would last only 5 years and would limit participation to only 10% of Iowa employees covered under small group health insurance plans.

However, a few members of the bipartisan group, at the urging of powerful special interest groups, decided to scuttle the agreement. As a result, they proposed an amendment that would jeopardize insurance for any small businesses that did not belong to one of these big powerful associations. This amendment failed by a vote of 44 to 55, meaning it was defeated in a bipartisan manner. After the defeat of the compromise-killing amendment, the Republican leadership deferred on the bill without allowing a vote on the actual compromise.

Prior to the amendment, I was looking forward to supporting the bill. However, to my surprise, Republican leaders stopped debate on the bill.

Since then, I have signed on to a compromise amendment. I hope that Republican leaders will keep their promises to help small businesses with their insurance costs, bring this amendment up for debate, and then pass a bill that will truly help all small businesses in Iowa.

The Iowa Legislature in now into “overtime”. This session was scheduled to be 100 days in length and last Tuesday, April 18th, we hit that point. But, as Yogi Berra said, “It ain’t over ‘til it’s over”. The Democrat and Republican leaders have been meeting with the Governor to hammer out the issues related to increasing education funding and reducing state taxes.

I hope we find a workable solution when we return this week. It’s time to set aside partisan bickering. Iowans win when we work together.

I do appreciate hearing from constituents. You can write me at the State Capitol, Des Moines, IA 50319; call me at 515/281-7328 or e-mail me at ro.foege@legis.state.ia.us.

Ro

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