Extending health coverage

Think of the money health insurance companies would make if nobody got sick or injured. Or, more realistically, think how much they could make if they could choose to cover only the healthy and strong. A law passed two years ago prevents insurance companies from doing that, but anecdotal evidence suggests the habit is continuing for some.

President Bill Clinton properly put more sting in the law this week when he announced that companies caught denying coverage to sick people will be excluded from the federal employee insurance market. The decision was a practical and creative way to use the government’s buying power to enforce regulations that should be followed anyway.

The 1996 law ensuring access, written by Sen. Edward Kennedy and former Sen. Nancy Kassebaum-Baker, requires that people losing group health insurance have access to individual coverage, regardless of pre-existing medical conditions. Federal and state officials, according to news reports, have found that insurance companies have sometimes either discouraged agents from selling to some people or offered coverage only at preposterously high premiums.

The federal employee program covers 9 million people, currently through 350 health care plans; the employees are a huge pool of customers that no health insurance provider would want to be kept from. But they will be now if caught by state insurance commissioners, who will keep track of any instances in which providers deny coverage and pass the information on to the federal government.

Four years after the humbling defeat of the president’s health care reform program, it is encouraging to see the administration — with lessons learned in 1994 — again try to address look for ways to extend health care coverage. This modest step, combined with the administration’s other recent proposals for Medicaid and Medicare, improves health coverage for the people who need it most.