CT’s Public Option Debate
Last week, the Insurance Committee held an important vote on a bill that would drastically change health insurance in our state.
SB-842 would allow individuals, unions, small employers with 1 to 50 employees, and nonprofits of any size to purchase health care through the state Partnership Plan. This undoubtedly would come with some price tag for taxpayers in our state, and I wanted to know the cost and other impacts of the proposal before I cast my vote on it.
But just before midnight before the morning of the vote, we received a nearly 60-page bill that was substantially different from the proposal we had previously received and held a public hearing on. We were now being asked to vote on this bill to move it to the floor.
This vote was set to take place just a few hours before a public hearing in the same committee on a second, alternative proposal (SB-1006) introduced by Senate Republicans and a third proposal — HB-6447 as introduced by the Governor, had just received a hearing two days prior. Three bills all proposing changes or improvements to healthcare in Connecticut.
We were told we would be giving priority to the first bill, the one most favored by the State Comptroller and our the Senate Committee Chair regardless of our objections or how little time we had to read it.
My two main objections with SB-842 are the policy and the process.
Healthcare, not health insurance, is the issue…
The Partnership Plan that would be expanded under SB-842 has already proven to be financially unsustainable to the taxpayer, incurring losses of $31.9 million in 2019 alone. Also, a ‘public option’ approach does nothing to address the underlying cost of healthcare: prices charged by drug manufacturers, health providers, hospitals, and most importantly, the government’s onerous taxes and assessments on insurance premiums. What it does do is pull consumers out of the existing insurance marketplace, driving up costs for those with a private insurance plan. If experience is our guide, a public option is not the right path for Connecticut.
I believe there are elements of the latter two bills (SB-1006 and HB-6585) that would better improve healthcare costs. The Senate Republican proposal would put into law a practice introduced by Governor Lamont and other states to monitor growing healthcare costs and expose where your money goes when you pay your premium or hospital bill. This practice, known as ‘benchmarking’, provides us data to show where costs of healthcare are increasing and thus where to focus on bringing those costs down.
I also support a provision in the Senate Bill that would require public comment and a vote by the Insurance Committee on future assessments on insurance premiums proposed by the state health insurance exchange. An assessment is just another tax, and the legislature should be the only branch to impose new taxes, not unelected officials in an executive bureaucracy.
Bad process makes bad policy…
Which brings me to my point about process.
While Republicans and several Democrats were able to successfully pass an amendment to the bill with new protections for consumers and the state’s budget, I still didn’t believe the underlying bill was ready to leave our committee. I didn’t feel it appropriate to hastily act on such an impactful piece of legislation, so I voted against it.
But regardless of the changes made at the meeting, it has been reported that the chair of the committee and the State Comptroller say they have spoken to the Speaker of the House and other leaders to make sure that those changes are removed before it makes it to the House floor.
While I understand that the legislative process does not always move in a straight line, protections for consumers and fiscal responsibility should not be up for a debate. They should be our top priority, not a bargaining chip.
We should be taking all the best elements of all three bills (cost monitoring, reinsurance, legislative oversight, fiscal controls and more) and voting on a good bill.
I look forward to further debate and discussion in the Insurance Committee as we consider more proposals to address the cost of healthcare. I hope the bill we eventually take up as a full legislative body is one forged through cooperation among all our members and one that addresses the root causes of high healthcare costs in this state.
Tammy Nuccio
53rd District: Ashford, Tolland and Willington