"Despite employer-paid healthcare, Hawaii has its coverage gaps, too" by Mark Niesse, Associated Press | July 27, 2009
HONOLULU - Hawaii’s decades-old law aimed at increasing health coverage by requiring companies to provide insurance to their workers has brought something less than universal healthcare to the 50th state....
Related: No Choice But Single Payer
Since its passage 35 years ago, the percent of uninsured in Hawaii has fallen to lower levels than nearly every other state, but the system left coverage gaps. And cost-conscious business owners have found an easy way to avoid the law by hiring more part-time workers who aren’t required to be covered....
Because Hawaii’s law covers only those who work more than 20 hours per week, some companies have changed their hiring practices so they can save money.
“Naturally, everybody tries to keep their workers as part time,’’ said Jack Schneider, president of J.S. Services, which handles human resources and mandated benefits for about 200 Hawaii companies. “If you create a law, people find ways to get around it.’’
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Since Democrat-controlled Hawaii passed its employer health insurance mandate, it has consistently had one of the lowest rates of uninsured in the nation, at about 8 percent in 2007, according to the Henry J. Kaiser Foundation. A federal survey showed Massachusetts had even fewer uninsured, at about 3 percent. The national average is 15 percent. Massachusetts approved a broad healthcare reform measure in 2006 that requires near-universal coverage and penalizes individuals who refuse to get coverage. Massachusetts is also different from Hawaii in that it has had some of the highest health costs in the country, while Hawaii has the lowest....
Yeah, we are getting gouged big-time!
But the study also shows that Hawaii ranks in the middle nationally in the percentage of employees working 19 hours or fewer per week, which negates the idea that businesses have significantly switched to part-time workers to dodge health insurance costs, said Gerard Russo, an economics professor and the report’s researcher and coauthor.
Low-hour employees make up only about 3 percent to 6 percent of the overall workforce in Hawaii, according to the Federal Reserve Bank report....
Russo said the climb to 8 percent uninsured by 2007 was caused by a combination of factors: The number of uninsured grew as the unemployment rate rose, healthcare costs increased across the country, and some businesses hired more part-time workers to avoid the law’s reach....
The experience in President Obama’s home state poses some cautionary realities as Congress considers a similar federal requirement that businesses provide health insurance to their employees in any sweeping overhaul of the nation’s healthcare system....
Similar loopholes could be exploited under vague language in legislation pending before Congress....
(Blog editor just snorts at the sentence)
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Also see: Boston Globe Omissions: Hiding Health Care Failure
