HMO members plummet in ’09
Heading into 2009, more than 200,000 residents dropped off the rolls of the six health maintenance organizations doing business in Connecticut, an 18 percent hemorrhage even as federal and state lawmakers struggle to fix the system.
While the Connecticut Insurance Department gathered the data amid widespread job losses, Congress had attempted to prevent dropped coverage by subsidizing much of the cost of workers”™ continuing with their former employers”™ coverage through the COBRA option.
Health Net of the Northeast Inc. accounted for more than half the HMO attrition in Connecticut, as members jumped ship amid continuing rumors Health Net Inc. had its Shelton-based operation on the auction block. Those rumors became reality in July, after Health Net struck a deal to sell its Connecticut, New York and New Jersey membership base to UnitedHealth Group Inc., the parent company of Trumbull-based Oxford Health Plans Inc.
Health Net”™s proceeds from the deal are set to a sliding scale in which it receives more depending on how many members stay with UnitedHealth after the deal closes.
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For its part, Oxford Health lost 15 percent of its HMO membership this year. Aetna Inc. had the lowest sloughing with a 4 percent decline, while CIGNA Corp. lost more than half its members in one year.
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For the first time ever in September, the U.S. Census Bureau calculated insurance coverage statistics at the county and metropolitan level. The data showed that while Connecticut is competitive at the state level regionally and nationally at 9 percent, cities like Stamford, Bridgeport and Danbury have about 20 percent of their population lacking health insurance. Fairfield County as a whole had an uninsured rate of 12.7 percent of the population.
U.S. Rep. Jim Himes addressed the ongoing federal health care negotiations at a series of health care forums in Fairfield County, including before the Greater Norwalk Chamber of Commerce.
“We have a really tough problem at the heart of this debate,” Himes said. “How do we as a society ”“ which we do with every other product ”“ determine who gets what?”
Himes added that the rocketing costs of health insurance are not just impacting the ability of businesses or families to carry insurance, but likely crimping entrepreneurship in Fairfield County and Connecticut as well, with experienced senior managers loath to take risks.
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“If you work at Pitney Bowes or GE and you have a great idea to start a new company, you are not going to do it,” Himes said. “You are not going to do it because you will be leaving your health-care insurance behind.”
For policymakers, however, it is those gainfully employed or looking for work who represent the large problem. Business owners polled this summer by the Connecticut Business & Industry Association continue to cite health care as the greatest cost to running a company in Connecticut. The vast majority continue to do so, albeit while shifting some costs onto workers through higher deductibles and other devices.
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“Uninsured rates as high as 20 percent in some Connecticut cities speaks to the crisis in our health care system,” said Jim Horan, executive director of the Connecticut Association for Human Services, in prepared comments. “Lack of access to affordable, quality health care hurts our families, our businesses, and in the long run, our economy.”
Led by Connecticut Speaker of the House Chris Donovan, Democrats in the Connecticut General Assembly approved the creation of SustiNet, an attempt to create a near-universal health care plan while lowering costs
State Comptroller Nancy Wyman and state Health Care Advocate Kevin Lembo chaired three meetings in September to organize SustiNet, but have yet to move beyond procedural organizing to actually begin the work of creating that plan.
At deadline, the SustiNet panel had yet to post minutes of meetings, but did provide links to online videos of meetings on the Connecticut Network service that webcasts government proceedings.