Gov. Ned Lamont announced he has submitted legislative proposals to the General Assembly designed to reduce health care costs for Connecticut residents.
The legislation is House Bill 6669, An Act Protecting Patients and Prohibiting Unnecessary Health Care Costs, and Senate Bill 983, An Act Limiting Anticompetitive Health Care Practices. Among the proposals in the legislation are the elimination of hospital facility fees charged at free-standing offices and clinics, the implementation of stronger regulatory enforcement tools at the Connecticut Office of Health Strategy, an effort to rein in aggressive marketing practices by pharmaceutical representatives, and the limiting of out-of-network costs for inpatient and outpatient hospital services to 100% of the Medicare rate for the same service in the same geographic area.
The governor is also seeking to prevent insurers from using incentives to steer patients to higher value providers and to require health plans to accept all providers in a health care system or none of them.
“Gallup recently reported that record-high numbers of Americans are putting off care due to costs,” Lamont said. “Approximately 38% of Americans put off care in 2022, the highest percentage Gallup has ever seen in its 22 years of polling. Two-thirds of personal bankruptcies are related to medical debt, the most common cause of bankruptcy, and healthcare is consuming a larger and larger percentage of GDP, now more than 18%. We simply can no longer afford not to take action. These bills I”™m proposing tackle this complex problem from multiple angles, and I am calling on all parties ”“ insurers, hospitals, doctors, employers, and consumers ”“ to join with me in working on solutions for the people of Connecticut.”
