Dems seek broader role in health insurance
But business group says a plan run by comptroller is running in the red
Connecticut’s state-run health insurance plan for municipal employees has been running in the red, the state’s largest business group said Friday as it fights efforts by Comptroller Kevin Lembo and legislative Democrats to establish an even greater state role in health insurance.
The Connecticut Business & Industry Association called for an independent audit of the Connecticut Partnership Plan for municipal employees.
“Given that the public option proposal currently under consideration by the legislature is largely modeled on the State Partnership Plan, it is incumbent on policymakers to address the significant questions surrounding the plan’s fiscal outlook and solvency status,” W. Wyatt Bosworth, an assistant counsel at CBIA, said in a letter to Lembo.
A public option would allow Connecticut residents to buy insurance from a state plan, with somebenefiting from subsidies. Atax on insurance companies would help subsidize costs for health insurance that’s beyond the reach of some.
Lembosaid the Partnership Plan is already subject to independent review, with actuarial services competitively bid and used to set the plan’s rates. Andstate auditors are authorized to examine the plan’s financial details, he said.
“I find it hard to believe, however, that the results of any additional auditing would alter the philosophical opposition to market competition held by insurance brokers such as CBIA and Brown & Brown,” Lembo said.
CBIA earlier this month gave legislators a report estimating that the state-run Connecticut Partnership Plan has a shortfall of nearly $97 million in the current budget year. It will require premiums of $616 million to cover claims and fixed costs but is set to collect $519 million in premiums, the report said.
From Jan. 1, 2016 through Sept. 30, 2020, the Partnership Plan paid out $1.01 in claims and fees for every $1 collected in premium, according to the report.
Lembodisputed the numbers. In the 2020 budget year, the Connecticut Partnership Plan had a medical loss ratio of 94%, or 94 cents spent on claims for every $1 in premiums, Lembo said. The plan had previously spent moreonclaims than it earned in premiums, but benefited from a legislative fix to address “regional cost disparities” affecting rates, he said in response to the CBIA.
The legislative change allowed the Partnership Plan to establish rates on a county level, according to the comptroller’s office, accounting for higher-cost Fairfield County. Previously, a uniform rate applied.
In the current budget year, the plan is projected to spend nearly 97 cents on claims for every $1 in premiums, he said. The estimates account for a return to health care, such as non-life threatening surgeries put off during the pandemic.
In response, Bosworth told Lembo the report used data from the comptroller’s office and “there are no meaningful discrepancies” in the data reported by Lembo’s officeandthe CBIA report.
The issue of a public option could be among the most contentious in the General Assembly. Elected officials says rapidly rising insurance costs are among the top complaints from constituents and Connecticut’s outsized insurance industry fiercely fighting efforts by Democrats to increase government’s role in the insurance market.
I have spent the last decade or so bemoaning the seemingly immortal “Bachelor” franchise, one of the dumbest, most cliche-riddled, trope-laden, misogyny-disguised-as-entertainment vehicles foisted on America this century.
The fact that plying women with alcohol and having them compete for a marriage proposal has sustained 25 seasons boggles the mind. The fact that the show routinely inspires such headlines as “CATFIGHTS, VIRGINS & BREAKDOWNS!” on the magazines displayed next to my kids and me in checkout lines is dispiriting.
The fact that it spawned a “Bachelorette” spinoff that plies men with alcohol and has them compete for a marriage proposal is equal opportunity eww.
I think the show’s recent spotlight has inadvertently managed to find some dark corners that need illuminating.
Host Chris Harrison announced on Feb. 13 that he is “stepping aside” from the show for an unspecified time period after an interview in which he addressed the behavior of one of this season’s contestants, Rachael Kirkconnell.
Kirkconnell, who is white, is a front-runner for a shot at marrying
Matt James, the first Black “Bachelor” in the show’s history. Former classmates have accused Kirkconnell, 24, of bullying people in high school for interracial dating, and past photos
have surfaced that appear to show her dressed in costume as a Native American and attending an Old South-themed antebellum college formal in 2018.
After the allegations and photos surfaced, Rachel Lindsay, the show’s first Black “Bachelorette” contestant, interviewed Harrison on “Extra,” where Lindsay is a correspondent.
“I saw a picture of her at a sorority party five years ago and that’s it,” Harrison said.
“Well, the picture was from 2018 at an Old South antebellum party,” Lindsay said. “It’s not a good look.”
“Well, Rachel, is it a good look in 2018 or is it not a good look in 2021?”
Harrison replied. “Because there’s a big difference.”
“It’s not a good look ever,” Lindsay replied. “She’s celebrating the Old South. If I went to that party, what would I represent at that party?”
Harrison then told Lindsay she was “100% right in 2021. That was not the case in 2018.”
(It’s worth noting that 2018 was a year after the neo-Nazi march in Charlottesville, Virginia, five years after the Black Lives Matter movement began and 153 years after the 13th Amendment was ratified, abolishing slavery in the United States.)
Harrison asked for grace and understanding and the “courtesy of time” for Kirkconnell. He repeatedly brought up the “woke police.” He mentioned “San Francisco erasing Lincoln and erasing Washington.” He talked about playing games on the playground as a kid in 1970s Texas that “weren’t woke.”
His remarks didn’t sit well with “Bachelor” fans. He apologized on Instagram a few days later and announced he was stepping aside. No word yet on when or whether he’ll return.
I’m less interested in Harrison’s professional future than I am in how this moment might shape and inform our conversations and progress on race and history and what we cling to and who we forgive.
CNN host Don Lemon invited Lindsay on his show to discuss her interview with Harrison.
“Why do you think Chris Harrison was willing to give Rachael Kirkconnell so much room for her hurtful actions yet couldn’t muster empathy towards communities of color who were offended, or even to you in that interview?” Lemon asked Lindsay.
“It was baffling to me that he was preaching grace and space and compassion,” Lindsay said, “but you’re talking to someone and you’re not giving them that same thing, or the very people who were offended by the actions of the girl that you’re defending.”
Exactly. In a conversation about the glorification and sanitation of an era marked by humans being sold and enslaved and tortured, calls for grace and compassion ring utterly hollow when you make them only on behalf of the ones doing the glorifying and sanitizing.
“You’re celebrating a time when I was in slavery,” Lindsay said. “When I was recognized as three-fifths of a person.”
Her words, not Harrison’s, are the ones that can move this nation forward as we reckon with rituals and holidays and building names and street names and statues that are, in many cases, rooted in a racist, violent history. Chicago is about to embark on some of this work when it reviews 41 public statues and commemorative markers identified by Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s administration.
Often, the loudest voices in these conversations echo Harrison’s initial thoughts: Woke police are coming for us all. What’s happening to humanity?
Lindsay’s thoughts invite us to ask a different, more productive set of questions: What would a nation look like that values and celebrates everyone’s humanity? When and how have we failed to do so? What do we do — in our cities, in our classrooms, in our offices, in our homes, in our entertainment — to get there?
Harrison’s words are grabbing the headlines this week. Lindsay’s, though, offer a road map forward.