Other proposals would require health plans to provide costly new coverage for mental illness and other specific illnesses. One result of further cost increases would be to force more businesses into deciding they cannot afford any health insurance. If that were to happen, thousands more New Yorkers would be left with no health insurance at all. With a growth rate still lagging most other states, we can hardly afford that. Partly because of our high health-care costs, the proportion of residents who are uninsured rose in New York at more than four times the national rate, from 1991 to 1996.
Experts agree that lack of health insurance usually means poorer health care.
The very last thing state leaders should be doing is driving even more families and individuals into the ranks of the uninsured. Make private insurance more available Rather than passing new laws to drive up health insurance costs, the state's top health-care priority should be reducing the number of uninsured New Yorkers, now estimated at more than 3.1 million. Newly available federal money will be used to expand the state's Child Health Plus program, providing coverage for another 420,000 children. But taxpayers in New York, who already pay far more than those in other states for publicly funded health care, will never be able to cover every state resident who lacks coverage now. Making it easier both for more private employers to provide coverage for their workers, and for more individuals to purchase their own health insurance.