Rhode Island is next in line for a unique health insurance program targeting the fishing communities in four New England states. A $1-million line item in next year’s federal budget will allow local fishers and their families to enroll in the Fishing Partnership Health Plan — a private program leveraged by public funds, according to Matthew Braunstein, senior legislative assistant to U.S. Rep. Patrick Kennedy.
The plan, already under way in Massachusetts and New Hampshire, will be available in Rhode Island by the end of the year “unless things don’t go according to the current plan,” Braunstein said. The Rhode Island plan will include the fishing village of Stonington, Connecticut. Maine will be the last state to enroll, he said.
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This latest allocation of U.S. Department of Commerce funds to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services brings Washington’s total contribution to the plan to $2.9 million. The program was jump started last December in Massachusetts and last July in New Hampshire using $1.9 million worth of 1996 disaster relief money for fishers suffering the effects of declining fish stocks.
Overseeing trust
Caritas Christi, the not-for-profit health system of the Catholic Archdiocese of Boston, oversees the trust into which all funds are funneled, said Scott Ferson, consultant to Caritas Christi and vice president of the Boston public relations firm of McDermott/O’Neill & Associates. Tufts Health Plan will administer the program in all four states, Ferson said. The regional HMO won a bid for the job in January 1997. Caritas Christi developed the insurance program “as part of its mission and Cardinal (Bernard) Law’s commitment to the industry,” Ferson said.
“Also they (Caritas Christi) are part of the provider network.”
St. Anne’s Hospital in Fall River, Mass., is the Caritas Christi facility closest to Rhode Island. St. Joseph Health Services of Rhode Island, with operations in Providence and North Providence, announced an affiliation with Caritas Christi last December. The deal is pending a final agreement and approval by the Rhode Island attorney general and Department of Health, according to a St. Joseph spokesperson.
The Rhode Island FPHP is awaiting the “go ahead from HHS,” Braunstein said. “That’s a bureaucratic hurdle that we’re having to contend with.”
To approve its expansion, HHS has required certain assurances about the plan, Ferson said. “They want to know that it’s solvent, that marketing materials meet certain standards across state lines, that the state has in some way sanctioned it and that there’s a revenue stream for the second year.”
Congress’ appropriating another $1 million to the plan should do the trick and pave the way for a program sustained by premiums in the future, Ferson said. The three-tiered plan in Massachusetts had 484 subscribers and more than 1,000 members at the six-month mark, Ferson said. Families pay an average of $400 a month, individuals about $125 a month and couples an amount in between. The Rhode Island plan will have separate rates.
Broader coverage
Massachusetts subscribers are mostly individuals who harvest off shore, Ferson said. However, people engaged in the on-shore processing and distribution of seafood would not be barred from the program, he said, adding “as long as you derive the bulk of your income as somebody connected to the fishing industry.”
What’s clear is that the fishing community in all four FPHP markets is woefully uninsured, according to a series of surveys conducted by Caritas Christi. In Rhode Island and a small pocket of Connecticut, 23 percent of commercially licensed fishers are uninsured, the survey showed. That number was 40 percent in Massachusetts, 34 percent in New Hampshire and 44 percent in Maine. Meanwhile, the insured are typically covered only part of the year and/or paying “way too much” for an indemnity-style plan, Ferson said.
Economic hardships in recent years and the seasonal nature of the work have kept fishers from affordable, high-quality care, Ferson said. “We’ve helped them get over that hump.”
Now it’s Rhode Island’s turn.
“This has been an exciting thing to establish. It’s just taking some time to do it right,” Braunstein said. “I know fishermen are very eager to sign up.”
