Gubernatorial candidate Tom Foley wants to let carriers sell health insurance free of Connecticut mandates that require coverage for certain ailments, saying it would go far toward getting small businesses to enroll and lowering costs.
The Republican proposed the measure last month while introducing his overall health policy agenda, with other goals including some that the state and its businesses are already doing such as employee health initiatives, and others untried here like tort law reform to set up special tribunals to hear malpractice cases, with an eye on limiting damages that can be awarded.
His Democratic opponent Dan Malloy had already laid out his health-care policy planks; in late September, Malloy canceled an online briefing on his plan to have been hosted by the Connecticut Health Policy Project, and at deadline had yet to reschedule it.
Among other proposals, Malloy wants to give small businesses and municipalities access to a large insurance pool to give them better bargaining power in negotiating rates with carriers. A bill was not enacted last year that would have allowed small businesses to join the insurance pool for state employees.
Small businesses would get cheaper insurance
In his own campaign briefing, Foley stopped short of saying he wants to do away with mandates, but his plan would effectively do so by giving employers a cheaper alternative for health insurance, one long sought by the Connecticut Business & Industry Association as a way to cut costs and increase the number of residents with health insurance.
The Connecticut General Assembly would likely quibble with any significant increase in the number of people uncovered by state mandates, and Foley spokeswoman Liz Osborn did not give any hints on Foley”™s strategy to muster sufficient support from Democrats to create such a plan.
Last year alone, the Connecticut General Assembly passed seven new mandates on health insurers, from prosthetics which most carriers offer in Connecticut as part of their group insurance plans, though not all for individual plans; to a requirement that group health insurers offer wellness programs with financial incentives for employee participation as an optional benefit.
If fully utilized, the six mandates passed in 2009 amounted to about $8.65 per health plan member annually, according to a 180-page study released last December by the University of Connecticut Center for Health and Public Policy.
Carriers are responding by offering small business health plans that push more of the costs onto employees, even as employers steel themselves for another year of double-digit premium increases anyway. ConnectiCare introduced one such plan this summer, featuring a $1,000 deductible on individuals for any services beyond a primary care physician visit ($2,000 for families); followed by a 50 percent coinsurance requirement on individuals of up to $3,000, or $6,000 for families.
“All the plans that are required under our mandated health care coverage in the state are very expensive, and many employers cannot afford them and so they”™re not providing any health care to our citizens,” Foley said. “I think we need to provide a means for employers who cannot afford the very expensive mandated health care plans to have a core-needs plan, so that people have health insurance that they are otherwise not able to obtain.”
Foley noted that large companies that self-insure their workforces do not have to adhere to the state”™s schedule of required health benefit coverage, and the state”™s Charter Oak Health Plan offers bare-bones coverage.
Foley won”™t commit on Charter Oak
Foley has not committed to continuing the Charter Oak Health Plan, which Rell created in 2008 and which has more than 15,000 members today who pay low premiums for basic insurance coverage. In the next breath, however, Foley touted the need for employers to have access to what he says is a plan that would be less expensive for businesses to buy into.
“Charter Oak ”¦ is a good plan for its need that was perceived at the time it was formed,” Foley said. “I think we need to see how the federal health care plan unfolds and what impact it has on our system, and whether or not there is a role for Charter Oak in the future.”
In 2009, the Connecticut General Assembly overrode a Rell veto to enact SustiNet, a state-run health plan, which is still under formation, offering rates designed to enable near-universal health insurance in Connecticut. Malloy supports SustiNet; for his part, Foley said SustiNet became moot with the passage of federal health reform.
“SustiNet right now is kind of like a plan without a purpose, so they”™re looking for a purpose,” Foley said. “If the purpose they find is a public option, if that”™s what they”™re recommending, we do not need and cannot afford a public option here in Connecticut ”¦ When I”™m governor, if SustiNet”™s only reason for being is to produce a public option, they will not be authorized to do that.”
