Lamont favors dialogue on public health care option
Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont seemed to offer some support for a public health care option for the state during an interview Wednesday night, but said it “depends what it means.”
“If it means buying into the state employee health care pool — I looked at that when I was in small business a year ago and said that’s going to cost me a fortune,” he said.
But — “if it means working with the health insurance community, creating a preferred network where people go to hospitals that have higher value and a little bit less cost ... sign me up,” Lamont added.
The comments came during a wide-ranging interview with radio host John Dankosky hosted by the Connecticut Mirror Wednesday evening.
“We used to say ‘universal health care is a good idea’ and it’s sort of a slogan — it’s no slogan. It is absolutely vital to your health and the public health to get this right,” the governor said. “I’d love to see the federal government step up in a serious way, and if they’re not, we’re going to think about it here at a Connecticut level.”
The idea is not exactly new.
The legislature tried and failed to pass a bill during the 2019 session that, among other things, would have required health care providers to provide a breakdown of their costs for services and allowed the state to ask federal authorities to import drugs from Canada, the Mirror reported at the time.
Lamont’s support for a preferred network as he described it comes as the state is facing down a pandemic that has left 5,000 dead, with many months still to go before a vaccine is widely available.
The public health crisis has disproportionately effected communities of color, something the governor acknowledged Wednesday.
But he also touted the state’s efforts to make testing widely available in cities hit hardest by the pandemic as a success of public health in the face of the pandemic.
“We took testing to the communities, we took testing to the church parking lots. We’re going to take vaccinations to the same communities,” he said.
The vaccine will not be prioritized based on wealth or zipcode the governor added.
Lamont said he plans to discuss the state’s plan to distribute the vaccine in greater detail during his Thursday news conference.
The governor offered fresh criticism for the federal government’s lack of a second comprehensive aide package.
“They are AWOL, and it’s getting dangerous,” Lamont said.
“If after 12 months of a knee-knocking pandemic that killed hundreds of thousands of people — our neighbors, our friends, our family, the federal government can’t figure out how to put their partisan biases into a suitcase ... I really worry about our future,” he later added.