Affordable insurance pilot programs could help keep Houstonians covered

By Dave Fehling / 11 News, 11:34 PM CDT on Tuesday, April 7, 2009

“My insurance went with my job,” says Richard Clement, who got laid off last summer from his job as a facilities manager for a big company in downtown Houston.           

Clement says going without insurance -- or “going bare,” as some call it -- was difficult.  He said he has ailments that require medication, but he could no longer afford his prescriptions.

“Actually, I feel bad because I was on two or three medications and I just had to stop,” Clement said.

But now, things have turned around. His brother hired him to help rebuild Ike-damaged homes in Galveston.

“We are very busy,” says Bill Clement, owner of Handyman Matters.

With just 14 employees, Clement’s company is tiny.  Small businesses like that often can’t offer health insurance, and until recently, Handyman Matters fell into that category.

“Basically that’s all we did was take a chance. When you got sick you had to go to the emergency room,” said Richard Cohn, a craftsman with the company.

But then, something happened that many thought impossible: Handyman Matters found an insurance plan both the company and its employees could actually afford.

“This is just a benefit that I didn’t even imagine,” Cohn said.

The plan costs employees just $60 a month.

Why so cheap?

“It’s all through UTMB, right here in Galveston,” Richard Clement said.

The UT-Medical Branch got input from businesses and a $1.6 million grant to develop its own health insurance plan for small companies. Under the plan, called “Three Share,” the total cost per employee is $180, with a third each paid by the employee, the employer and a subsidy from UTMB.

It’s like a medical insurance miracle, and soon it could be helping workers in Harris County.

“We can’t wait for the national effort to come,” says Karen Love with the Harris County Healthcare Alliance , a group of government agencies and hospitals in Houston that’s about to launch a program similar to Galveston’s.

 “I think we’ve finally reached the tipping point,” Love said. 

It’s a tipping point because local governments may not be able to wait any longer, especially in Harris County. The cost to local taxpayers for charity health care is soaring, with one-third of Houston residents now uninsured -- the most of any major American city.

The pilot project could mean county hospitals that provide charity care won’t have to spend so much.

“They’re not getting 100 cents on the dollar, they might be getting 60 cents on the dollar, but that’s 60 cents they weren’t getting before,” Love said.         

The alliance figures several hundred thousand workers in Harris County would be eligible, but the pilot program will enroll only about 5,000.

“That’s a drop in the bucket but we hope that it demonstrates that these kinds of projects can work,” Love said.

For those businesses already on the plan, they’re learning what a surprising difference insurance makes. It’s helping Handyman Matters recruit new skilled workers they desperately need.

The workers they already have are back on preventive medications and no longer having to miss work to wait all day in ERs for doctor visits.

It could be several years before these pilot programs might develop into permanent insurance plans.

For a guide to affordable plans currently available in Houston, click here.