Opinion - Using the Internet to find health insurance

By Karen Kerrigan

chairman

Small Business Survival Committee

Washington, D.C.

Americans bought about $95 billion in goods and services over the Internet in 2003 -- a significant boost to the overall economy. The health insurance sector could use some of that dynamism.

It's past time that consumers had the opportunity to get the best health coverage at the best deal possible. A basic law of economics is that competition is good for innovation, quality and price. If consumers could buy health insurance online, from anywhere in the country, costs would come down and more people would be insured.

But it would take an act of Congress.

Right now, some states erect barriers to affordable health insurance by passing laws that force us to buy insurance plans that cost too much, and often contain benefits we don't want or need. Since 1980, state legislatures and Congress passed more than a thousand laws that force consumers to pay for particular benefits in their insurance policies.

Large businesses and labor unions are exempt from these "mandated benefits" because they can self-insure under a law called ERISA. That means individuals who buy their own policies and small employers end up paying the price for these politically popular but very expensive mandates.

The situation is intolerable in some states. Families who buy their own health insurance in New Jersey, for example, are forced to pay anywhere from $3,000 to $17,000 per month -- that's right, per month -- for a health insurance policy with a $500 deductible.

Nobody has this kind of money, so what do people do? They usually go without insurance. When they get sick, they go to the emergency room, where hospitals often overcharge them.

If consumers could get health insurance over the Internet in any state, they wouldn't have to go without. A New Jersey resident (or family) could buy a policy in Pennsylvania, New Mexico or Alabama.

Using the Internet, we can tear up the expensive red tape and regulations and boost access to affordable insurance for millions of Americans.

Allowed to shop the entire country for the health plan that fits their particular needs, individuals wouldn't have to pay for benefits they didn't need or want. Costs would come down, and more people could afford insurance -- all without a big government takeover of the health care system and the large tax increase that would be needed to fund such a scheme.

Rep. John Shaddegg (R-Ariz.) has a bill that would let us to buy health insurance online -- the CHOICE Act (for Creating Healthier Options In Health Insurance Through Choice And Efficiency).

Under the CHOICE bill, consumers would be able to use the Internet or physically go to another state to buy health insurance, and the policy would contain the benefits as directed by the laws of that state.

Putting the power of the Internet to work to solve one of our nation's most pressing problems is the rationale driving this bill. Every member of Congress should get on board. There's no reason why the one item we count on for our health security should be the one thing we can't buy online.