Life Insurance

CONCORD — An estimated 4,000 uninsured single adults under age 26 could gain medical coverage under a family plan thanks to a bill that passed the New Hampshire House Wednesday on a mostly party-line roll call, 231-118. Republicans were in the minority.

House Bill 790, co-sponsored by Sens. Martha Fuller Clark, D-Portsmouth, and Maggie Hassan, D-Exeter, qualifies a young adult who attends post-secondary school full or part time or still lives in New Hampshire for health benefits . House Speaker Terie Norelli, D-Portsmouth, said she was pleased with the vote.

"It shows people understand we need to address the problem of the uninsured in New Hampshire," she said. "They tend to use the most expensive emergency room care. Medical providers have to shift those costs in the form of higher premiums onto the insured and their employers."

The prime sponsor, Rep. Martha McLeod, D-Franconia, said the legislation is not technically a mandate on the private sector, but any family plan must cover these young people. The bill would not apply, she said, to self-insured groups such as the State Employees Association. They are regulated under federal law.

The bill faces a partisan fight in the Senate, where a nearly identical bill, Senate Bill 83, passed 13-10 on strict party lines April 5. Its sponsors include Clark, Hassan and Rep. Marjorie Smith, D-Durham, who chairs the House Finance Committee.

"That's a huge problem," Clegg said. "If my son were the father, he'd lose his insurance, too, if the child were born. He'd have a dependent."

Tricia Brooks, chief executive officer of New Hampshire Healthy Kids, testified at the House hearing for HB 790 that people between ages 19 and 25 are the least likely to carry insurance. Kids under age 18 are four times as likely to be covered, she said.

An opinion poll issued last month by the New Hampshire Alliance for Children's Healthcare found that 83 percent of respondents want the state to do more to cover more people. Seventy percent favored a solution along the lines of HB 790.

"There's an inherent unfairness here," Brooks said. "Full-time students are able to stay covered under their parent's plans, but part-time students and teens working straight out of high school have no benefits."

Two other bills still alive at the Statehouse seek to expand health care coverage. One urging Congress to approve a single-payer, universal health insurance plan passed the House 201-129 on March 21. The co-sponsors of HCR 5 include three Portsmouth Democratic state reps- Jim Splaine, Paul McEachern and Chris Serlin.

House Bill 305 co-sponsored by Hassan would convene a task force to study ways to reduce the number of uninsured citizens. It passed the House by voice vote March 21 and would try to expand Medicaid coverage and the Healthy Kids Program, look at forming an uncompensated care pool, and see if a state-subsidized insurance plan might work here like ones in New York, Vermont and Rhode Island.

Splaine said the debate over all four bills has sensitized lawmakers to the plight of people who have to pay all their own medical costs, if they can.

A recent study by the N.H. Center for Public Policy Studies found that 23 percent of young adults lack insurance, compared with 14 percent for all adults. The report said the uninsured are likely to earn less than $30,000 per household, live in the four northern counties and be self-employed, single, Hispanic or black and under 30 years old.

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