Mandates Drive Up Health Insurance Costs for Small Employers

As the conversation about the high cost of health insurance continues, state lawmakers should remember that there is something they can do to help control escalating costs.

Although many factors driving the cost of healthcare are out of their hands–such as healthcare trends and changes under federal healthcare legislation–state legislators do control an important factor: health benefit mandates.

Connecticut already ranks in the top five nationally–a costly top five–in the number of health benefit mandates required by law. The issue is that in the aggregate, mandates add up to big dollars and make an already expensive product even more costly. 

Specifically, small employers are impacted by the high cost of more mandates because most cannot afford to self insure and therefore must comply with all new health benefit mandates, unlike larger employers (including the state) that self-insure.

Mandates drive up consumers’ costs because they are state requirements for insurers to cover more services and procedures which make it more expensive to buy insurance. 

But something can and should be done about this. Contact your legislator and tell them you do not want higher healthcare costs. Urge them to reject any new health benefit mandates.

For more information, contact CBIA’s Jennifer Herz at 860.244.1921 | jennifer.herz@cbia.com | @CBIAjherz