&letterheadKeep costs

affordable

TO THE EDITOR: Your editorial on June 13, 2008 urging the legislature to require insurance coverage for post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, didn't quite have all the facts.

The legislature did not "fail" to put the disorder into Timothy's Law, the state's mental-health statute enacted in 2006. To the contrary, including PTSD in the list of "biologically based" conditions that would receive unlimited coverage was considered and ultimately a decision was made to keep it off the list. This doesn't mean PTSD isn't recognized as a mental-health issue and covered. It just means the coverage is not unlimited. It is a distinction that advocates of the bill gloss over, and that's disingenuous.

Small businesses are struggling to pay for health insurance coverage for their employees (if they can off it at all). Every added benefit adds to the cost of that coverage.

Recognizing that mandating coverage of mental-health services was going to increase the cost of providing health insurance, the original law included $100 million to help defray the increased costs for small businesses. It also required a study on the use and costs of the mental health services, with that study yet to be conducted.

Keeping health insurance affordable is the only way to keep New Yorker's insured. This should be the top priority of our state lawmakers - not adding to the mandates we already have.

Jeff Leland

Chair

The Employee Alliance for Affordable Health Care

Albany

&letterheadPolo match

benefit set

TO THE EDITOR: The Adirondack Polo Club will be playing the Stockade Polo Club in a Ride for Red Polo Benefit Match On July 13 in Keene.

The match is a benefit for the Go Red for Women movement of the American Heart Association, all money raised will fund research and education for women's heart disease and stroke, the number one and three killers of women in the United States.