As newborn insurance measure dies, lawmaker charges retribution
Lesser’s bill would have required certain health insurance policies that cover family members to cover newborns from birth. It was removed from the implementer, he said, after he attacked a House proposal that would have provided a tax break for businesses that used offshore captive insurance companies.
Connecticut newborns will not be automatically enrolled in health insurance coverage, a polocy that was seen as a way to protect parents of premature babies from surprise hospital bills.
The proposal had been contained in the 837-page document that finalizes the state budget, which the state Senate adopted Thursday, one day after the House voted for it. It was removed in an act of political retribution, the bill’s main advocate, state Sen. Matt Lesser, D-Middletown, charged Thursday.
“I understand there’s horse-trading, but this is still shocking to me that people would play this game,” Lesser said from the Senate floor after voting to pass the so-called budget implementer bill. “The message I was given from my leadership and the governor’s office was that it was intended to punish me. I just find that baffling and just sad.”
Each year the massive bill is a repository for political wish lists and 11th hour trade-offs over bills that did not pass on their own, in addition to necessary policy provisions. The newborn bill had been one of them, making it one of the last battles of the 2021 session.
Lesser’s bill would have required certain health insurance policies that cover family members to cover newborns from birth. It was removed from the implementer, he said, after he attacked a House proposal that would have provided a tax break for businesses that used offshore captive insurance companies.
Captive insurance companies are an alternative to self-insurance that allow mostly large businesses to create their own insurance companies to save costs from using traditional commercial insurance companies.
A more limited version of the self-insurance bill died in the Insurance and Real Estate Committee, which Lesser co-chairs with Rep. Kerry Wood, D-Rocky Hill, and some provisions included in the implementer were never part of a public hearing or were not vetted by any legislative committee, he said.
Lesser did not name the proponent of the tax proposal, but his insurance co-chair, Wood, has pushed for ways to make it easier for captive insurance companies to do business in Connecticut. She did not respond to a request for comment Thursday. Wood and Lesser clashed on other issues this year, most notably the question of creating a state-directed health plan, which Lesser has favored for years.
“I understand people want to give corporate tax breaks but the idea that you would punish the parents of preemies because you disagree with me on tax policy I think is baffling and just really dispiriting,” Lesser said.
Lesser brought his fourand-a-half-month-old son, Samuel, to Thursday’s special session — not as “a prop” to make his point, he quipped — but at the request of Senate Majority Leader Bob Duff, D-Norwalk, who his colleagues call the baby whisperer. Sen. Mae Flexer, D-Killingly, brought her baby daughter, Rose to the Senate
floor.
Duff was also among senators Thursday who expressed disappointment over proposals left out of the final budget bill. His data privacy bill, which he championed with Sen. James Maroney, D-Milford., was also stripped out of the implementer.
The bill would have given Connecticut consumers the right to access, correct, delete and export data collected about them, and to opt out of the sale of that data or the use of it for targeted advertising.
“We have a crisis of privacy in our country right now,” Duff said from the Senate floor. “Companies are profiting off of every single keystroke that we make on our devices.”
Duff said lobbyists from the tech industry pressured House lawmakers, including Democrats, to drop the proposal.
While the bill passed out of the General Law Committee, it never came up for a vote in the House or Senate. Duff and Maroney argued that because it would have created several new positions within the Connecticut Attorney General’s
Office, it made sense to include it in the budget implementer.
“Every day we allow corporate entities to surveil us, and not only are they surveilling us, they are selling that data and profiting off of that data,” Maroney said.
Maroney said he and Duff would be back next year with a “stronger bill” that puts consumer’s rights ahead of “out-of-state corporate pocketbooks.”
Republicans criticized the implementer bill for being littered with Democratic priorities that didn’t get passed during the regular session, including free phone calls for inmates and expanding absentee voting.
“This should all be dealing with the budget and nothing more, and there’s a lot more in here than just budget-related items,” said Sen. Dan Champagne, R-Vernon, who was among six Republicans who voted against the budget implementer.
The omnibus bill includes $229 million more in municipal aid and increased funding for community nonprofit agencies that provide most of the social services in the state, including an added $60 million over two years for adult’s and children’s mental health addiction services.
More than $280 million in state and federal funding will go toward increases to community nonprofit programs over the next two years.
The bill also includes Medicaid increases as part of deals negotiated by the Lamont administration to provide better pay and benefits for nursing home and group home workers, who’d threatened large scale strikes. It also includes include an increase in the state’s earned income tax credit.
Another $26 million in Department of Economic and Community Development grants will be appropriated over the next two years for organizations such as the Discovery Museum in Bridgeport and the New Haven Festival of Arts and Ideas.