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N E W Y O R K 1VIEDICINE Official Publication of the Medical Society of the County of New York Editorials U. S. Reinsurance Plan Faces Obstacles The plans of the Eisenhower administration to establish reinsurance for health insurance coverage is meeting with opposition at hear- ings being held in Congress. The proposals embodied in S-3114 would enable health insurance organizations to pro- vide greater coverage to the elderly, give more catastrophic coverage, and enter into other areas which at present are difficult to cover without sharply increased premium rates. _ Under the proposed reinsurance plan, the company would pay 25 percent of the claims in the fringe categories and could call upon the Federal reinsurance fund to pay for the other 75 percent. At recent meetings in New York of the Blue Shield and Blue Cross commissions; the latter (Blue Cross ), concerned with hospital insur- ance, endorsed the proposal for reinsurance. In contrast Blue Shield, concerned with med- ical care insurance, urged that the proposal be postponed so that additional time could be allowed to permit all interested parties to study it. Favoring the reinsurance proposal were the American Hospital Association and also the Farm Bureau Insurance Company of Colum- bus, Ohio. Objection came from the American Dental Association, the American Medical Association and from Mr. Alfred J. Bohlinger, New York State Superintendent of Insurance. Mr. Bohlinger said it was hard to see how Federal reinsurance could avoid evolving into a Federal subsidy . . . or how it will make more people insurable ... or how it can avoid a threat of Federal control of insurance car- riers by the authority it would convey to the Secretary of the Department of Health, Edu- cation and Welfare. The insurance carriers themselves are in. vigorous opposition as expressed by the Execu- tive Committee of National Association of Insurance Commissioners. Trained newspaper observers of the political scene in Washington are now predicting that the Eisenhower-Hobby program on medical health legislation will not pass the present Congress, with the possible exception of the Hill-Burton hospital expansion program. Tip-off on this point can be seen in the turn-about of Senators Ives (R., N.Y.) and Flanders (R., Vt.) in withdrawing their own bill for the same objectives. Senator Flanders is quoted as saying "Senator Ives and I thought it best to remove our bill (S-1153) from the legislative path of the Administration's plan at this time. But I am prepared to reintroduce it into the new Congress next year, with some change to conform to whatever may be en- acted in the health field of 1954." In a word, the two good Republican Sena- tors are prepared to sacrifice their own bill if it can help the administration gain its ob- jectives. They would only consent to do this if real and serious objections blocked the Eisenhower proposals. MAY 5, 1954 353