A Baby in Every Crib?
“The government steps in and regulates business from time to time,” Hultgren argued. “We regulate business to promote fairness, to promote competition, to eliminate discrimination. We have health policies in the state of Illinois that insure pregnancies, that insure abortions, that insure sterilization. But not for this class of people. It’s estimated that 1 in 12 couples of childbearing age fall into this category.”
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HB 1470 was written and lobbied for by Resolve of Illinois, an advocacy group for the infertile. Opposed by both business and insurance interests, it cleared the Illinois house and senate in June without a vote to spare. So why was Hultgren calling? He’d already won, hadn’t he?
This campaign has a lot to do with garnering public sympathy–and just as much to do with manipulating someone you’ve almost certainly never heard of: Erhard Chorle. Chorle’s a special assistant to the governor, and his job is to review HB 1470, study the position papers, listen to the arguments of both sides, and then brief the governor, perhaps throwing in a recommendation of his own.
Brian Boyer, who’s doing PR for Resolve, said he naively assumed that when the bill passed the General Assembly there were no more battles to fight. Then he realized that the opposition had merely rolled up its sleeves. “After we found out that the Manufacturers’ Association was out there lobbying–and of course they have a lot more muscle and a lot more money than these infertile couples do–I thought it would be a good idea to see whether there could be some favorable articles,” Boyer told us. “If there was a supportive column by Joan Beck, certainly that wouldn’t hurt.”
Would HB 1470 noticeably worsen the drag? Another thing Beck did not do was sort out the competing apples-versus-oranges claims that put the bill’s financial costs in dramatically different lights. Resolve argues that HB 1470 would raise insurance costs by about $1.50 per insured employee per month. IMA lobbyist Boro Reljic points out that in vitro fertilization is a chancy process that could be attempted four times under the bill before coverage was cut off. He says that insurers could wind up paying additional medical costs that might approach a billion dollars.
The American Way
