Health care for uninsured proposed

Jim Baron

PROVIDENCE - Companies with more than 1,000 employees would have to pay at least 8 percent of their payroll toward employee heath care or kick into a state fund to cover uninsured Rhode Islanders under legislation proposed Wednesday by Lt. Gov. Charles Fogarty and Rep. Amy Rice.

Quoting 2002 statistics that show there are 120,000 uninsured Rhode Islanders, and that 66 percent of those have at least one full-time worker in the household, Ann Rhodes, director of Rhode Island for Health Care, a group created and supported by the Service Employees International Union, a principal backer of the bill, said,

"We’re facing a health care crisis in Rhode Island and across the country.

"Health care that once seemed reliable is quickly being priced out of reach for thousands of hard-working Rhode Islanders," Rhodes said, adding, "as costs go up, some of the largest and most profitable corporations in the state are making it difficult for their employees to get the health care they need."

Rice, a Portsmouth Democrat, pointed to a poll conducted last year in which 71 percent of Rhode Islanders indicated support for the proposal, which is called Fair Share Health Care.

She said the bill would "ensure that very large, profitable corporations would no longer be allowed to choose not to provide adequate and affordable health coverage for their employees. When large corporations do this, their employees have no choice but to go without insurance or apply for public programs in order to receive necessary health coverage for their families."

While "large" is defined as a company with more than 1,000 employees, supporters of the bill said there is no definition of "profitable." Any company with 1,000 or more employees would be deemed profitable enough to afford to pay 8 percent of payroll toward employee health care, no matter what the bottom line of their balance sheet shows.

Organizers of the Statehouse news conference where the measure was unveiled denied that the bill is aimed at Wal-Mart, one of the nearly 40 Rhode Island companies with 1,000 or more employees. They said they do not know how much companies pay toward their employees health insurance, but a reporting provision in that bill would force the corporations to provide that information.

The group could not say definitively that any company would be required to pay more than it is doing currently if the bill passes.They acknowledged that Rhode Island is one of the top states in the nation in terms of having employer-provided health coverage.

Fogarty, who is widely expected to run for governor this year, said the bill "targets and eliminates what I consider corporate welfare" because "when large, profitable corporations don’t pay, we end up paying - the citizens of Rhode Island and the small businesses of our state." He said the legislation creates "a level playing field."

"Unfortunately," Fogarty said, "today we have a higher percentage of our citizens without health care than we did three years ago. As more Rhode Islanders are faced with the prospect of losing their health insurance, there are families throughout the state wondering how they are going to afford the high cost of co- pays as well as premium co-shares."

Peter Derouen, director of political and legislative affairs for the United Food and Commercial Workers Union Local 791 said companies that do pay for employees health coverage, such as Shaws and Stop & Shop supermarkets "shouldn’t be put at a competitive disadvantage for the sole reason that they provide health care. We need to get more large businesses to step up to the plate and do the ethical thing - to invest in their most precious asset, which is their workers."

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