HEALTH INSURANCE MANDATES: Proposed Bills Fail to Consider Cost

      A Sacramento Bee editorial criticizes the state Legislature's failure to assess the potential costs of 52 "new mandates" for the state's private health insurance system, noting that Senate Insurance Committee Chair Jackie Speier's (D-San Mateo) request for a cost appraisal from the California HealthCare Foundation will not arrive in time for legislative debate. While some bills, the editorial notes, are "modest," such as mandating contraceptive coverage, others are "overreaching," such as two bills that would mandate coverage for clinical trials and eliminate "an existing review system that allows independent experts to compare these treatments to standard approaches." The editorial concludes: "California simply can't afford to ignore the cost of new insurance mandates that may push some employers to drop coverage. One in five Californians already has no health insurance. None of these 52 bills addresses this problem, and many would make it worse" (6/30).