ALBANY, N.Y., January 2 – The Employer Alliance for Affordable Health Care, the Business Council of New York State, and other groups have presented state lawmakers a petition calling for the creation of a Health Insurance Mandate Review Commission.

Last spring, then-Governor George E. Pataki and the Legislature earmarked $300,000 for the commission. According to Jeff Leland, chairman of the Employer Alliance, If the legislation isnt passed by March 31, 2007, the money will be lost.

More than 900 individual business owners and 35 individual Chambers of Commerce signed the petition, joining such organizations as the National Federation of Independent Business, the New York Farm Bureau, Main Street Small Business Coalition, and the Chamber Alliance.

The entire region suffers when employers are forced to use limited resources to pay for unstudied health insurance mandates, Leland said.

The Health Insurance Mandate Quality and Cost Containment Commission would study the cost and medical efficacy of health insurance mandate bills before lawmakers consider them. Similar commissions are already in place in 26 other states, including New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Vermont, and Massachusetts.

Health insurance mandates require employers who offer health insurance to include coverage for specified benefits as part of the basic insurance package, which drives up cost and diminished employer choice and accessibility in purchasing their insurance plan, said Leland.

New York has 46 different health insurance mandates required in every policy sold in the state, according to the Council for Affordable Health Insurance, and lawmakers consider nearly 100 more every year within the benefit of an independent analysis prior to passage.

Small business owners consistently cite the high cost of health insurance premiums as one of their primary concerns, said Rebecca Malchow, assistant state director of the National Federation of Independent Business. As a result, NFIB continues to support initiatives like this one that could help make insurance more affordable by systematically evaluating existing mandates, as well as new ones that are proposed. This analysis could provide the foundation for eliminating some existing mandates, potentially rejecting new ones proposed, and ultimately provide the framework for a streamlines, affordable health insurance plan for small businesses.

Studies have found a nexus between high premium costs and the number and cost of state health insurance mandates. New Yorks chiropractic mandate law enacted in 1998 included a requirement that the Insurance Department study the impact of this new mandate. That study, released in 2000, determined that the cost of these services accounted for as much as 2.6 percent of premium, and concluded that there were no savings attributable to the passage of the mandate. It has since been determined that the chiropractic mandate is one of the most expensive mandated services in New York, adding more than $265 to the annual premium of every family policy in New York.

In 2002, while considering a mandate to cover computer aided detection (CAD) mammograms, the Legislature passed a bill that called for the Insurance Department to formally study this issue. The report concluded that a lack of data prevented a recommendation to mandate computer aided detection screenings. Since that time, new studies on CAD have been released. If a commission was in place, they might be able to effectively track scientific advances to determine if their findings in 2002 are still appropriate today.

Because of skyrocketing health insurance costs, nearly three million New Yorkers are still without coverage. We need to find ways to make insurance more affordable, said Jeff Williams, legislative director for the New York Farm Bureau. The commission can help shine a light on the true costs of mandates insurance coverage legislation and help ensure that the number of uninsured will not rise.