THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, July 21, 1994 TAG: 9407210542
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: BY BETTY MITCHELL GRAY, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 59 lines
Eastern North Carolina could become the next area of the state to form a health care alliance to provide health insurance for the area's small businesses, according to state and local officials.
As many as 2.2 million people in up to 44 North Carolina counties could be eligible to buy health insurance through the program which is being organized by the Chambers of Eastern North Carolina, a group of about 28 eastern chambers, said Chip Cherry, president of the Pitt-Greenville Chamber of Commerce. He is chairman of a committee organizing the plan.
The group plans to hold a meeting on the proposed alliance in Goldsboro with local chamber of commerce directors on Aug. 29 and is scheduled to present its plan for a purchasing alliance in October to the state board overseeing the program.
The alliance would offer a health insurance package to businesses with fewer than 50 employees, under the plan being developed now, Cherry said.
``It's a concept but not all aspects of it are not clearly defined,'' Cherry said.
In North Carolina, nearly 67 percent of the 1 million people in North Carolina without health insurance are full-time workers and their families and employees of small firms are less likely to have health insurance than employees of large firms, according to the Duke Center for Health Policy Research.
To help small employers throughout North Carolina, the General Assembly allocated $4.5 million last year to set up a system of such purchasing alliances across the state. In May the Asheville-based Western North Carolina Health Alliance received a $50,000 grant from the state health alliance board and became the state's first health alliance.
Under the plan, small businesses come together to form an alliance which makes health insurance coverage available to the group at much lower rates than the businesses could obtain on their own. And insurance offered through the alliance would eliminate restrictions on so-called ``pre-existing conditions,'' or health insurance problems that exist at the time that insurance is purchased.
Lt. Gov. Dennis Wicker, the author of the small business health insurance alliance plan for North Carolina, said health alliances won't solve all of the health care problems that exist in the state, but are a good first step toward addressing the problem.
Wicker said in an interview Friday that he hopes to organize health insurance alliances across the state by the end of 1995.
``It would be a tremendous step forward, not only in adding people to the health insurance rolls but in retaining coverage by small employers,'' Wicker said in an interview Friday. ``It will have a very positive impact on rural North Carolina.''
KEYWORDS: CHAMBERS OF EASTERN NORTH CAROLINA
HEALTH INSURANCE MEDICAL INSURANCE
by CNB