Gov. M. Jodi Rell fought off a half-dozen competing health plans to win passage of her Charter Oak Health Plan to provide health insurance for state residents lacking coverage.
Now, the administration will have to chart how the plan will work.
The Charter Oak plan was one of several health-care initiatives shoehorned into the state”™s two-year, $36 billion budget signed into law in late June. Besides the health plan, Rell won Connecticut General Assembly support for a vast increase in education spending while fighting off an increase in income taxes. Instead, the state is increasing the cigarette tax by 49 cents to $2 a pack.
To develop specifics of Rell”™s Charter Oak Health Plan for uninsured adults, the state will shift $2 million from the Tobacco and Health Trust Fund in the upcoming fiscal year to the state Department of Social Services, and $11 million from the tobacco fund the following year to administer the health plan.
The bill also creates a “Health First Authority” to draft a health plan to cover every resident, to be completed by the end of next year.
According to the Connecticut Health Policy Project (CHHP), the Charter Oak Health Plan will be available to those who have lacked insurance for six months.
Rell approved legislation to:
Ӣ earmark $210 million for increased reimbursement rates to doctors, hospitals, clinics and dentists that treat patients in Medicaid;
Ӣ provide funding to enroll children at birth into the Connecticut Healthcare for Uninsured Kids and Youth (HUSKY) plan for low-income families, waiving the first four months of premiums;
Ӣ increase the income limit for HUSKY coverage from 150 percent of the federal poverty level to 185 percent, resulting in coverage for an additional 13,000 people; and increased the income limits for pregnant women from 180 percent of the poverty level to 250 percent;
Ӣ require schools to check annually if children have a health insurance policy;
Ӣ allow retired physicians and dentists to renew their state licenses for free if they donate at least 100 hours of their time annually to practicing medicine pro bono at a public health facility; and
Ӣ contribute $30 million in the 2008 fiscal year for distressed hospitals.
The budget provides $27 million for physicians treating Medicaid patients, which the Connecticut State Medical Society indicated will go a long way toward ensuring health care access for low-income families.
“Physicians don”™t want to have to turn patients away, but that”™s what has happened across Connecticut because physicians have been paid more or less the same by Medicaid for almost two decades,” said Matthew Katz, executive director of the Connecticut State Medical Society. “We are optimistic that as long as this increase isn”™t eaten up by HMO administrators, it can expand access to physicians for thousands of Medicaid patients.”
Another $1 million will be shifted from the tobacco fund over two years to the University of Connecticut Health Center, which is overseeing a Connecticut health information network better to manage patient data.
Under a new contract, the Connecticut Academy of Science and Engineering is to analyze whether the state should replace or remodel the John Dempsey Hospital at the University of Connecticut Health Center in Farmington. The study will estimate the number of hospital beds needed until at least 2018.
While Rell won passage of her Charter Oak plan, six other major health bills died, including:
”¢ Connecticut Healthy Steps, which would have expanded HUSKY and created a “Medicare for All” plan;
Ӣ Connecticut Saves, which would have created a universal health insurance law;
Ӣ a deferred health insurance payment program that would rely on private market insurance policies and tax credits; and
Ӣ three plans to create insurance pools, two offering insurance to all residents and one tailored for those lacking insurance and employees of small businesses.
Â
