After the nation was stunned by Republican Scott Brown capturing the U.S. Senate seat held by the late Democratic lion Ted Kennedy, attention in Connecticut quickly shifted to the race to replace Chris Dodd as U.S. senator ”“ and the impact it could have on health reform at the federal and state level.
State Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, the leading Democratic candidate for Dodd”™s seat, has yet to weigh in on the federal health debate.
In the race for the Republican nomination, former WWE CEO Linda McMahon immediately elevated health care in her near-daily barrage of campaign emails critical of former Congressman Rob Simmons, who held his lead among prospective Republican voters polled last month by Quinnipiac University.
McMahon derided Simmons for what she says was his support of the universal health bill in Massachusetts, which Simmons”™ camp responded was also supported by Brown himself when he was a state senator in the Democratic-dominated Massachusetts State House.
Simmons”™ campaign website offers no specifics on how to achieve affordable health care, however; and even as she attacked Simmons on the health care front, McMahon has yet to offer detailed solutions to escalating health insurance costs, except for reform of the medical malpractice system.
In Connecticut, family health insurance premiums grew more than seven times faster than the median family income this past decade, according to Ellen Andrews, executive director of the New Haven-based Connecticut Health Policy Project. That does not count deductibles and co-payments that have increased, in some cases by hefty margins; and what she says are eroding benefits.
Andrews said the U.S. Senate bill under consideration would reduce the number of Connecticut residents lacking insurance, estimated at 343,000, by 225,000 by the year 2019. Without reform, she expects the uninsured population to top 400,000 people.
“The current reform bills place a great deal of responsibility on states,” Andrews wrote in a policy brief published last month. “Connecticut has struggled to implement even the basic Medicaid programs we now have. Additional state responsibility for potentially over 100,000 new Medicaid members is troubling.”
Â
Andrews is one of several policy experts helping craft SustiNet, which the Connecticut General Assembly overrode Gov. M. Jodi Rell”™s veto to enact, and which is now being designed. SustiNet has several features in common with the federal effort under consideration, including:
Â
- bans on insurers excluding members joining who have pre-existing conditions;
- health insurance exchanges that would list options for obtaining insurance;
- medical “homes” of advisers to help patients manage their health and use of services.
The major questions of the federal bill include whether to put mandates in place on individuals and businesses to join or offer insurance plans, as enacted in Massachusetts; and whether to create a federally funded program, which Massachusetts also has in place, though critics say the program is already over budget.
The Robert Wood Foundation has been tracking sentiment on health reform since September. In a December poll, more than 30 percent of the respondents said their personal finances would be worse off if federal health reform passed, compared with under 25 percent the month before. A third of those surveyed said their access to health care would be worse if health reform passes, up from 25 percent in November.
Michael Critelli, the former CEO of Stamford-based Pitney Bowes Inc. who has been an active proponent of health care reform in Connecticut, termed as “a rookie mistake” President Obama”™s handling of health care reform that played so prominently in the Massachusetts Senate race, in a blog posted last month on his website.
“Whereas (the Clinton administration) shut out Congress from the process of developing the legislation, President Obama gave up too much control to members of Congress who had no natural leader to bring them together,” Critelli wrote. “(As CEO) I learned the painful lesson not to delegate critical tasks to unaccountable groups and committees. There has to be a single person accountable to deliver the results, and that person and I needed to be aligned.”
