LI pols, Schumer team to fight health insurance hike

Two Republican Nassau County officials have joined with Democratic Sen. Charles Schumer to fight a possible increase of almost $53 million in the county's health insurance costs next year.

The New York State Health Insurance Program, which covers more than a million county, town, village, city and school employees and retirees in the state, said health insurance premiums for municipalities in the state could increase between 13.4 and 22.5 percent. NYSHIP negotiates a premium cost for their coverage with private insurance companies.

In a joint statement last week, Schumer, County Executive Edward Mangano and Comptroller George Maragos vowed to work with state officials to help negotiate the best deal for the county.

Maragos noted that Schumer has helped Nassau in this area before, just last year working to get $83 million in federal Medicaid relief funds. He said the senator is working on getting about $22 million more for 2011-12. But he also noted that the extra cash is federal stimulus money "that will end."

"If these premium increases are allowed to come into effect, they will cost Nassau County up to $52.8 million more than 2010 and will have a devastating effect on the county finances as well as on the hard-pressed local taxpayers," Maragos said.

NYSHIP has proposed the double-digit increases, but the exact figures will be announced in October after its negotiations are completed.

David Ernst, a spokesman for the state agency, said the increases must be put in context. "In 2009 and 2010, respectively, the premium increase was 1.16 and 3.29," he said. They were so low because we subsidized it with unprecedented amounts of our reserves [accumulated through previous years' premium overcharges]. We now have less reserves."

Schumer said he will work with Mangano and Maragos to have NYSHIP use "all of its leverage when negotiating with private insurance companies . . . Now more than ever NYSHIP needs to play hardball . . . to keep rates low."

Mangano said the three of them will "explore ways to prevent this job-killing tax hike from being passed on to families and employers."

Maragos said the three officials agreed to push the state to set up a "prior approval" law to mitigate or cap costs as called for in the recently passed federal health care reform bill.