Pamela Reese Finch. executive director of the Employer Alliance for Affordable Health Care, lays out the case against a proposed mandate in New York:
Health insurance mandates are bills that expand required benefits under private health insurance coverage for small and medium-sized businesses, but generally do not apply to larger companies that can self-insure. Mandates are proven to increase the product cost. Since New York is one of the most heavily-mandated states in the nation, it comes as no surprise that our insurance is among the most costly.
This bill requires private insurance to offer expanded treatments to individuals diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder. ASD is a broadly defined variety of conditions and across the nation, diagnosis of ADS is rapidly on the rise. Health insurance policies already cover medical conditions associated with ADS. This legislation would require health insurance to now cover services deemed “educational” in nature — setting a trend for our private health insurance to cover items that are not medically-related. The cost of this new coverage to individual policy holders will be anywhere between 2 percent and 6 percent. This would be on top of the 12.2 percent that is already paid to cover the cost of New York ‘s 51 other health insurance mandates.
