Bill seeks inclusion of diabetes in health insurance coverage

A Senate proposal will require health insurance providers on the island to include people with diabetes in their coverage in order to avoid complications and bring down medical care costs.

The legislation, offered by Senate President Paul A. Manglona, is expected to be tackled at today’s session of the upper house to be held on Rota.

The Diabetes Health Maintenance Act of 2000 will ensure accessibility by diabetic patients in the CNMI to necessary supplies and equipment as well as health care for their treatment.

“The purpose of this legislation… is to require planning and to impose, upon insurance providers, insurance coverage to individuals who have been inflicted with the diabetes disease as well as coverage for supplies and education,” according to the bill.

Diabetes, one of the leading causes of deaths among indigenous people in the Commonwealth, afflicts more than 2,000 patients. Of these, nearly two-thirds are Chamorro and Carolinian, according to official statistics.

Its increasing number in recent years has become too costly for the government to manage, and has prompted the Legislature to pass the Diabetes Control Act in 1998 to curb its growth.

Diabetes is a common, serious, chronic disease in which the body fails to produce normal sugar levels in the blood and urine. It has many forms: Type 1 is defined as insulin dependent, Type 2 is non-insulin dependent, and gestation diabetes which develops among pregnant women and usually disappears after they have given birth.

If not treated well, diabetes can lead to complications such as heart disease, high-blood pressure, blindness, lower extremity amputations, dental disease and kidney failure.

According to Mr. Manglona’s bill, each individual and group health insurance policy and other similar forms available in the CNMI shall provide coverage for individuals with insulin-using diabetes and with elevated blood glucose levels induced by pregnancy.

This coverage shall be a basic health care benefit and shall entitle each individual to the medically accepted standard of care for diabetes and benefits for its treatment as well as supplies and equipment.

The measure will prohibit the reduction or elimination of these types of insurance coverage. Among the basic health services that health policies must provide include diabetes self-management training and medical nutrition therapy.

It will task the Commissioner of Insurance to enforce the proposed regulations, which shall not apply to short-term travel, accident, or limited or specified disease health policies and plans, the bill said.

In 1998, Gov. Pedro P. Tenorio signed a law appropriating $300,000 for the creation of a new section under the Division of Public Health called Diabetes Care and Control Center.

The Center is envisioned to address the health care needs of diabetics in the community as well as to conduct research, outreach and prevention programs about the disease.