{"id":78,"date":"2008-07-17T12:22:44","date_gmt":"2008-07-17T16:22:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cnht.org\/news\/?p=78"},"modified":"2017-12-18T16:22:20","modified_gmt":"2017-12-18T21:22:20","slug":"lynch-take-a-stand-no-so-insurance-rates-rise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cnht.org\/news\/2008\/07\/17\/lynch-take-a-stand-no-so-insurance-rates-rise\/","title":{"rendered":"Lynch take a stand? No, so insurance rates rise"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>July 17, 2008<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.unionleader.com\/article.aspx?headline=Lynch+take+a+stand%3F+No%2C+so+insurance+rates+rise&#038;articleId=bcfd7a6b-d671-413e-bbbd-9ac0fe5b21c6\">Union Leader<\/a><\/p>\n<p>GOV. JOHN LYNCH knows he should have vetoed Sen. Bob Clegg&#8217;s bariatric surgery bill. He understands that health insurance mandates raise the cost of health insurance. That&#8217;s why he has said he opposes them. And yet he let Clegg&#8217;s mandate bill become law anyway.<\/p>\n<p>Granite Staters should not be surprised that Lynch ducked yet another tough issue. That&#8217;s how he has maintained such high approval ratings. It&#8217;s pretty easy to be popular when you never make a decision that could offend others.<\/p>\n<p>However, Granite Staters should be offended by this one. Clegg&#8217;s bill requires that any health insurer doing business in New Hampshire cover weight-loss surgery, which can cost $10,000 or more. Clegg claims that the surgery saves insurers money in the long run. Maybe that&#8217;s so, but insurers pay people big bucks to figure those things out, and they have concluded otherwise.<\/p>\n<p>And besides, that isn&#8217;t the issue. The issue is whether the state should pass laws forcing insurers to offer whatever services legislators &#8212; for political reasons &#8212; would prefer they offer. Lynch knows that the answer is no. He has acknowledged that mandates mean insurers cannot offer people low-cost plans that fit their individual needs. Mandates compel everyone to buy insurance that covers, say, weight loss surgery, even if they know they will never need that service.<\/p>\n<p>He knew he should have vetoed this bill. But he didn&#8217;t. He let it become law without his signature. That was a copout. <strong>The people should be upset that the governor knowingly let a bad bill that will raise their health insurance rates become law.<\/strong> They should be doubly upset that he did it the cowardly way, hoping to dodge responsibility for it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>July 17, 2008 Union Leader GOV. JOHN LYNCH knows he should have vetoed Sen. Bob Clegg&#8217;s bariatric surgery bill. He understands that health insurance mandates raise the cost of health insurance. That&#8217;s why he has said he opposes them. And yet he let Clegg&#8217;s mandate bill become law anyway. Granite Staters should not be surprised [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3,71,35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-78","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles-nh","category-governor-watch","category-health-care"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cnht.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cnht.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cnht.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cnht.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cnht.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.cnht.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6615,"href":"https:\/\/www.cnht.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78\/revisions\/6615"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cnht.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cnht.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cnht.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}