Gov. Don Carcieri should heed the recommendation delivered last week by Citizens Financial President and CEO Lawrence K. Fish and assemble a special commission to study solutions for escalating health insurance costs.
At the Rhode Island Public Expenditure Council’s annual meeting on Oct. 7, Fish made a pointed comparison – one that should ring loud and clear to anyone concerned about the health of the Rhode Island economy. He compared the current crisis of rising health care costs to that of the state’s workers’ compensation crisis of the early 1990s.
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It was a dark time, one that saw businesses threatening to leave the state because of the high cost of an ineffective system.
Fish suggests that like they did in the early 1990s, state leaders – from political circles and the business and labor communities – must work together to help solve the problem. It was a formula that worked more than a decade ago, and it remains the formula most likely to spur success today.
“The parties with the most to lose and the most to gain stopped pointing fingers at each other,” Fish said at the RIPEC meeting. “The (workers’ compensation) solution didn’t come easily, but no one – not labor, not business, not the politicians – left the table until the problems in the system were solved.”
The banking executive timed his comments perfectly. Throughout the state, small businesses are anxiously awaiting news on their health insurance premiums.
In all likelihood, the news that business owners receive will not be good. In recent years, the question has not been whether health insurance premiums will rise, but rather, by how much? Will they rise by 10 percent – or 15 percent? Or perhaps they will rise even higher than that.
The rising cost of health insurance premiums is an economic crisis. Companies are reducing FTEs, putting off capital expenditures and even considering whether there are cheaper places to do business.
Fish is right in calling for all parties to sit around the same table. The governor is the appropriate conduit to make that happen.
Representatives from small business and big business, along with our major health insurers and leaders from the medical community must join with our elected officials. Representatives of the state Department of Business Regulation should be involved in the process, as well.
Already, Secretary of State Matt Brown has convened a health care task force, led by a Washington-based consultant. Brown should be commended for that effort and we expect that his group will provide vital information and recommendations.
The governor’s task force should be one that is intent on adopting real policy changes so that this crisis does not get out of control.
Our workers’ compensation system isn’t perfect. But it is better than it ever was and it is no longer the same deterrent it once was to doing business in Rhode Island. That’s not too much to ask of our health care system.
