Benefits pool proposed for small business

Assembly candidate Ed Gobel of Las Vegas is preparing a plan he said can help more than 100,000 small Nevada businesses provide their employees with health insurance for more than 60 percent less than buying it on their own.

Gobel said 85 percent of working Nevadans who lack health insurance are employed by small businesses that simply can't afford to provide it.

"What we're proposing is to put them into one pool and have companies bid on the right to insure all of them," he said.

Gobel and Dr. Alan Myers, who helped draft the idea, said creating a large insurance pool out of all those tiny businesses, often with five workers or less, would get premium reductions of at least 40 percent.

Gobel, a Republican, is running for the Assembly District 1 seat vacated by Tom Collins. He and Sen. Ray Shafer, R-Las Vegas, who supports the insurance concept, have already asked the Legislative Counsel to put it into bill draft form for the 2005 session.

And Myers said the other half of the proposal could increase the total discount to more than 60 percent. That is to let individual workers select 14 different types of coverage to suit their needs, Instead of requiring every company that provides health insurance to provide coverage for all 21 mandated benefits contained in current state law.

"Right now, a 62-year-old man has to buy maternity coverage," Gobel said. "That makes no sense. We want to allow people to select the coverages they need."

They said the state should trust people to make intelligent choices about what kinds of coverage they need.

Myers said major insurance companies would compete for the business by bidding much lower premium rates than they can for an individual business person with only a few workers.

To ensure that that happens, the legislation wouldn't trigger until businesses with enough workers to make it work had signed up.

"We now have a large enough population and enough small businesses to balance this pool," Myers said.

Gobel added that it would also save the state money by reducing the number of uninsured people whose only choice now is to go to an emergency room when sick or injured. When they can't pay, the state picks up the cost.

"Our plan would guarantee additional cost savings, culminating in truly affordable health-care insurance for tens of thousands of uninsured Nevadans," he said.

Gobel is a longtime activist for veterans' rights and services who has lobbied the Legislature for 10 years.

Contact Geoff Dornan at gdornan@nevadaappeal.com or 687-8750.