Expand Affordable Choices for Small Businesses: Many small businesses are struggling to keep providing health insurance to their workers. New Hampshire HealthFirst will help provide small businesses and their workers with new, more affordable, health insurance choices. It requires every insurance carrier, insuring more than 1,000 covered lives in New Hampshire, to now offer a standard health wellness plan.

Focus on Keeping Workers Healthy: New Hampshire HealthFirst will help bring to small businesses the same types of innovations that large companies are using to control their health care costs. The Insurance Department will develop an advisory commission to develop the specifics of the standard wellness plan, but it will help control costs and keep workers healthy by:

• Promoting wellness
• Promoting primary and preventative care; establishing a medical home
• Managing care for persons with chronic health conditions or acute illness
• Promoting the use of effective, low-cost care
• Promoting quality through the use of evidence-based care, best practice standards and patient-centered care

More Affordable Choices for Small Businesses, No Cost to State Government: HealthFirst will be developed without any cost to state government. The proposed legislation sets the plan rate at or below 10 percent of the prior year’s median statewide wage. Rhode Island passed similar legislation last year, retaining important protections for people and producing a savings of more than 15 percent when compared to similar coverage in the market.