April 2010-Turtle Mountain Star (new healthcare law)

By Mike Manston
For The Star

A week after the historic healthcare bill was signed by President Obama, the only certainty for local healthcare administrators is they don’t yet know how the bill will affect area facilities.
“It’s such a big bill and very complicated, I think everyone’s still trying to figure out what’s in it,” said Kimber Wraalstad, CEO of Rolla’s Presentation Medical Center.
While the new bill is supposed to benefit more than 30 million new people who haven’t been able to afford healthcare coverage under the old system, Wraalstad indicated that there won’t be much of a change in care provided by PMC.
“I’m not certain there’s much in it for the smaller hospitals, but we’ll eventually get it figured out and continue to do what we need to do to take care of people……

Insurance impact

North Dakota Insurance Commissioner, Adam Hamm, indicated he and many of his colleagues from other states have serious concerns about the long-term effects of the new legislation. Hamm said some projections from Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North  Dakota while legislation was making its way through Congress indicated North Dakota insurance premiums could rise by as much as 15 percent for small businesses and severely effect individual policy holders who might see as much as a 75-100 percent increase in premiums when all of the mandates of the bill finally kick in.

“In analyzing the bill, there are some very good things in the bill, but myself and other insurance commissioners from different states really believe it could raise insurance premiums dramatically in the next few years. Unless or until the cost containment issue of medical costs is addressed, we have some serious concerns.”

“There’s no way to know what’s going to happen, but it will have to be tweaked or fixed before everything kicks in in 2014. Expanding access is a laudable goal, but we have to figure out better ways to pay for it. The current system was unsustainable, but some issues definitely need to be addressed.”

Hamm said the bill mandates individual states to set up Health Insurance Exchanges, which in theory, could potentially be a good part of the legislation. Health Insurance Exchanges are entities that will allow small businesses and and individual policy holders to pool together to find lower insurance premiums. “This could be potentially a good part of the bill, but how it will work remains to be seen,” Hamm said. Right now, everybody is in a dead sprint to keep on top of the conditions in the bill and figure out what it’s going to mean to the individual states.”

If the North Dakota Insurance Department becomes the agency required to set up and maintain that mandated Health Insurance Exchange, Hamm estimated that an additional 15 to 20 people would likely be required to operate the new department. Where the funding for those additional positions would come from is still in question, one of the many questions that needs to be answered in the future.

Kevin Svingen of First State Insurance of Rolla and Bottineau said he believes the bill could have negative effects on individual policy holders. Svingen admitted that he doesn’t have much knowledge about the legislation except for what he has heard on the street and read about it, but he is taking a wait-and-see approach before passing judgment.
“I personally think it’s going to have a more negative effect than most people think,” he said. “We don’t do a lot of our business in health insurance and a lot of people have already left that industry. If companies are going to have to pick up people with pre-existing conditions and take everybody, it’s definitely going to cause higher premiums. The biggest thing, I believe, is what’s going to happen with immigration and how that is going to be dealt with in regard to insurance coverage.”