Ben on Health Care: Ensuring all Americans have access to quality & affordable health care
Reliable, affordable health care should be a right. In Congress, I will fight for universal health care to make sure no New Mexican has to choose between food and medicine. Higher insurance premiums make it tougher for businesses to pay for employee coverage, and taxpayers end up with the cost burden through Medicaid and indigent funds. Our current system is broken, and we must fix it. The investment in universal health care would end up saving taxpayer money and giving all Americans a better quality of life.
Health-care costs are not just a problem for the 400,000 New Mexicans who are uninsured. Premiums have skyrocketed out of the range working folks can afford. Too many New Mexicans who have coverage have gone without a needed surgery or physical therapy because they can’t afford it. And too many have been victimized by insurance companies that refused to pay their medical bills.
Recently I ran into a married couple who told me their health-insurance company had refused to pay their medical claims after the woman contracted endometriosis and was treated for infertility. The company claimed – wrongly – that the infertility was a pre-existing condition, and the couple didn’t know what to do. The PRC, through our Division of Insurance, looked into the situation, and the insurance company was forced to pay what it owed after an investigation reviewed the company’s denial of coverage.
The situation highlighted a bigger problem: What about those New Mexicans who don’t know what to do or where to go when they are cheated out of legitimate medical claims?
That’s why I initiated a PRC investigation into the health-insurance industry’s denial practices, to make sure illegal denials like that couple’s are the exception, not the rule. My fellow commissioners and I also developed legislation that expands coverage and closes loopholes the industry had been using to unfairly refuse payment on medical claims. The legislation -- Senate Bill 226 -- was recently signed into law by Gov. Richardson. New Mexico is one of the first states in the country to enact such legislation, but this is only a first step. In Congress, I will continue to lead the way to quality, affordable coverage for every American.
