National Conference of State Legislatures
The Forum for America's Ideas
July 26, 2005
The Honorable Dennis Hastert
Speaker
U.S. House of Representatives
Washington, D.C. 20515 |
The Honorable Nancy Pelosi
Minority Leader
U.S. House of Representatives
Washington, D.C. 20515
|
John Adams Hurson
Chairman, Health & Government
Operations Committee
Maryland House of Delegates
President, NCSL
James E. Greenwalt
Director, Senate Information
Systems and Administrative
Services
Minnesota
Staff Chair, NCSL
William T. Pound
Executive Director |
Re: H.R. 525, the Small Business Health Fairness Act
Dear Speaker Hastert and Minority Leader Pelosi:
On behalf of the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) I am writing to express our opposition to H.R. 525, the Small Business Health Fairness Act. Despite sincere efforts to make improvements to the legislation to address state concerns, our key issues remain unresolved.
This legislation would:
- preempt state laws that provide critical protections to consumers and fails to replace them with adequate federal protections;
- destabilize the state small group insurance market, undermining previously enacted state and federal insurance reforms, and reintroducing practices that had been banned by those laws; and
- provide insufficient resources to the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) to perform the necessary regulatory and oversight duties associated with regulating health insurers, providing fertile soil for unscrupulous entities to flourish unfettered by state laws, state lawmakers and state regulators.
We are mindful of the extreme hardship many small businesses face as they try to provide affordable and high quality health care coverage for their workers. NCSL remains committed to working with you and other members of Congress to find solutions that will provide high quality, affordable health care coverage for employees of small businesses and for all of our constituents.
Sincerely,
William T. Pound
Executive Director
cc: Members, U.S. House of Representatives
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