Issue Position: The Maryland Health Exchange

Issue Position

The Maryland Health Exchange has been a total disaster in its implementation since October 1, 2013. Over 70,000 Marylanders lost their individually purchased health insurance virtually overnight as the Affordable Healthcare Act (ACA) prohibited health insurance companies from selling health insurance that did not meet its definition of health insurance.

Marylanders who were very happy with their health care coverage and their family doctor suddenly found themselves without either. Many of these are neighbors, friends, relatives, or perhaps yourself who have health issues that could be proven to be catastrophic if their coverage was cancelled.

The Affordable Health Care Act is anything but "affordable."
We haven't yet seen what will happen to hundreds of thousands of Marylanders once the second phase of the ACA goes into effect. This November following the General Election, businesses are commanded to provide coverage to all their employees that work over 30 hours full-time in a week.

As a small business owner, I can tell you what will happen when this part of the law is carried out. Small businesses cannot stay in business if they must provide the expensive coverage offered on the Maryland Health Exchange to all their full-time employees. Owners will be forced to make the tough choice to either make all their employees into part-time workers to avoid paying for expensive coverage or go out of business. There is no other alternative a large or a small business owner can make. This "healthcare" program is a job destroyer.

The $170 million Maryland Health Benefit Exchange website crashed the first day it went live. The website has continued to this day to be plagued with problems with frozen accounts, incorrect information, error messages, and failure to transmit enrollment data. The entire program has proved to be such a mess that Governor O'Malley had to take drastic measures and bailout the exchange by passing an Emergency Health Benefit Insurance bill to the tune of $5 to $10 million. Our Health Exchange was to be the ideal model for the rest of the nation. Maryland has been the model for how government run health care can be managed incompetently. Instead of the predicted 150,000 to enroll in the exchange, only a little over 61,322 people have signed up. And the majority of those have chosen to sign up for Medicaid, not the Health Exchange.


As your representative in Annapolis, I will:
Submit an amendment to put a price cap of no more than $400 a month per family on health insurance coverage offered through the Maryland Health Exchange.
Craft a bill that allows patients the option to only sign up for catastrophic coverage if they wish and also have the ability to pick and choose beyond catastrophic (ex: adult dental versus pediatric dental) instead of the "one-size-fits-all" expensive approach.
Give doctors the final word authorization in what healthcare remedy should be provided and not the insurance companies.
Allow individuals and companies the right to purchase health care coverage outside the state if the purchaser feels the coverage is more affordable and/or better coverage.
Offer businesses tax relief incentives to cover their full-time employees.
Make premiums fully tax deductible if a person purchases a full wellness (not catastrophic only) healthcare coverage. .

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