House sends Senate weakened health bill

Deborah Baker | The Associated Press

2/10/2008 -

The House on Sunday endorsed a watered-down version of the health coverage legislation that Gov. Bill Richardson wants lawmakers to enact in the 30-day session that ends Thursday.

The bill, which passed the House on a vote of 37-31, went to the Senate.

"We're concerned that it's not as comprehensive as the bill the governor introduced," said Human Services Secretary Pam Hyde.

But she said the administration is eager to keep the bill moving as the session winds down.

Richardson has been pressing lawmakers to adopt sweeping reforms aimed at extending health coverage to the roughly 400,000 New Mexicans who are without it.

"We have for years only been piddling around the edges of health care reform," said Rep. John Heaton, D-Carlsbad, who sponsored the legislation. "We just don't seem to make any big progress."

But lawmakers have been reluctant to make major, big-ticket alterations in the health care system this year. Earlier, the House overwhelmingly approved a bill creating a Health Care Authority that would come up with a plan in a year to get health care to all New Mexicans. That bill is pending in the Senate.

Richardson wants to require everyone to be insured, and to make that happen by expanding government programs, enacting insurance reforms, and mandating businesses to contribute to a fund if they don't offer their workers insurance.

The bill that emerged from the House, however, lacks the mandates to have insurance and for employers to contribute.

It creates a Health Care Authority with 11 voting members — five appointed by the governor, five by the Legislature, and the state insurance superintendent, who works for the independent Public Regulation Commission. The authority would hire an executive director.

It would not have rule-making authority, but would develop a plan and recommendations by July 2010 for expanding coverage, including an analysis of whether employers should contribute.

The authority would absorb the existing Health Policy Commission in July 2009, and within a couple of years after that would take over the administration of a variety of health coverage programs, including the Retiree Health Care Authority, the New Mexico Health Insurance Alliance, the health insurance programs for schools, and some insurance programs run by the Human Services Department.

A Healthy New Mexico Work Force Fund would be created, fed in part by diverting from the state's general fund the money from increased premium taxes as more health insurance is sold.

Critics objected that there is no money appropriated to make any of the changes. The state budget for next year, which the Legislature already has passed, doesn't provide funding for the reforms.

Rep. Keith Gardner, R-Roswell, said more than 300,000 of the 400,000 uninsured New Mexicans are already eligible for existing programs and could be covered now "if we were willing to write the check."

"We know they're out there," Heaton agreed. "We just don't know who they are."

The House in three hours of debate rejected a series of amendments proposed by Republicans. It did adopt one change, eliminating language that would have allowed domestic partners who were covered by a state or local government worker's health plan to continue to be covered when that worker went into the Retiree Health Care system.