Gov. Kelly Ayotte accused health insurance giant Anthem on Wednesday of using delay tactics to avoid covering New Hampshire children who need mental health care. She also blasted a GOP-controlled House committee for voting down a bill to force Anthem to pay up.
“Anthem keeps saying that they’re negotiating in good faith, but all it has been is a dilatory tactic,” Ayotte told reporters Wednesday. “They’re trying to delay, to get the legislation off the table. We wouldn’t need legislation if Anthem and other insurers agreed to cover this mental health care for children.”
That legislation is SB 498, sponsored by Sen. Regina Birdsell (R-Hampstead) and passed by the upper chamber last month.
In a sign of how important the bill is to the first-term Republican, Ayotte took the unusual step of releasing a public statement supporting the legislation just as the House Commerce Committee was taking up the bill.
“It’s appalling that Anthem and other carriers would deny coverage for critical services to any child experiencing a mental health crisis. I urge the committee to advance this legislation so we can hold insurance companies accountable and protect coverage for mental health services for some of our most vulnerable children,” Ayotte said in an early morning statement.
The message fell on deaf ears as the committee voted 14-4 to send the bill to study. Republicans largely voted against the anti-Anthem legislation, while several committee Democrats voted for it.
The bill establishes the New Hampshire Children’s Behavioral Health Association, which would collect “assessments” from insurance carriers that could be used to fund mental health services for children. That “assessment” is defined as the “assessable entity’s liability with respect to the childhood behavioral health services.”
Some House members are calling that a tax.
“The thing is that the assessment, flat out, is a tax,” Rep. Carry Spier (D-Nashua) told her fellow Commerce Committee members. “And here’s where the problem comes in. The Supreme Court has said, ‘You can tax the employees of an ERISA. You can tax the properties of an ERISA.’”
ERISA is the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974.
“You can tax the third-party contractors of an ERISA, like a PBM. But what you cannot do — states cannot levy assessments on employer-sponsored health plans to fund state-level health initiatives.”
And, Spier predicted, if the state passed the new law, “there will be litigation.”
“There are a lot of people looking at this amendment and looking at this bill, and within five minutes — and that’s my own estimate — they’re going to start suing.”
Ayotte was outraged after the vote.
“I was incredibly flabbergasted and disappointed by the House vote on this, and I believe that we should be covering mental health for children,” Ayotte said.
Birdsell told NHJournal, “I don’t blame the governor for being angry!”
“The insurance companies have been getting away with not providing or paying for the mental health care children and their families need through the Wraparound Program, even though they have private insurance. Instead, they are put on Medicaid, which is paid by the taxpayers. We were hoping House Commerce would hold them accountable, but apparently not.”
Despite the House committee vote, Ayotte isn’t giving up.
“I’m not going to let up on this. We need to do the right thing,” Ayotte said Wednesday.
“It seems to me common sense that they should cover this for the children of New Hampshire, and that we shouldn’t be forced into a position where children could potentially not get the immediate care that they need.”