New Haven Register (New Haven, CT)
Public option divides Dems
State Sen. Matt Lesser’s appearance at a news conference Tuesday on health care reform hosted by Gov. Ned Lamont might at first glance have looked like a statement of support for the governor’s plan.
That’s part of the language of politics. The Middletown Democrat, however, was not there to issue his backing, but to signal he’s ready to negotiate with Lamont on a long-running, sticky issue that divides the party: A so-called public option health insurance plan.
Lesser is out to convince Lamont that Democrats in the General Assembly who favor the public option have the better plan to reduce costs for strapped families struggling to pay for medical coverage. It’s yet another debate between Lamont and large factions of his own party pushing progressive reforms on several fronts.
In play in the health care debate are several competing bills. The one championed by Lesser would create a state-sponsored insurance plan for small businesses and nonprofits — the public option. The other, proposed by Lamont, would address one of the root causes of skyrocketing health costs: prescription drug prices.
A Republican plan unveiled earlier this year would use medical cost benchmarking to save consumers money — based on the idea that transparency lowers prices. That’s similar to what the Commonwealth of Massachusetts implemented in 2012. Aspects of the GOP bill could find their way into the other proposals if lawmakers vote on a final plan, an outcome that’s far from certain.
“We need to pass a big health care bill to address the economic and health sides of the pandemic” Lesser said Tuesday. “That’s the single most important thing left on our plate this session.”
Lesser has long championed the public option, including in 2019, when the plan failed amid a veiled threat by Bloomfield-based Cigna, the giant health insurer, to pull operations out of Connecticut. Health insurers consider the public option to be subsidized competition against an industry with thousands of jobs in the state.
Speaking after the news conference, Lesser said he sees the debate over health care reform as the “big unfinished product” of this year’s legislative process. The Lamont administration has made moves toward legalizing sports betting and online gaming, recreational marijuana sales and other pressing issues, but “we are first and foremost in a pandemic.”
There’s overlap between the legislative Democrats’ and governor’s proposals, with the public option as the major sticking point. Lamont reiterated his opposition to the proposal Tuesday, saying, “I’m pretty reluctant to have taxpayers underwrite any of the risk here.”
“What I’m really trying to focus on is the underlying costs of health care, how we can bring that down,” the governor said.
Lamont indicated Thursday that he was open to negotiating. “Matt and Kerry are coming up with innovative ways that we can bring down the cost and I’m willing to take a look at that,” he said, referring to Rep. Kerry Wood, DNewington, the General Assembly’s Insurance and Real Estate Committee co-chair along with Lesser.
In play in the health care debate are several competing bills. The one championed by Lesser would create a state-sponsored insurance plan for small businesses and nonprofits — the public option. The other, proposed by Lamont, would address one of the root causes of skyrocketing health costs: prescription drug prices.
Lamont’s bill would institute a cap on how much prescription drug prices could rise in a year, and would fine drug manufacturers that exceeded that limit. Lesser called the governor’s plan “a really aggressive proposal to try to curtail prescription drug price increases that nobody has ever tried before.”
Despite that view, the insurance committee advanced the governor’s bill Monday.
Under the arcane rules of the General Assembly, both proposals are “alive and in the mix,” Lesser said, but they both aren’t going to pass the General Assembly. Now he’s hoping he can get Lamont to say “yes” to the public option.
Lesser sees the pandemic, which has resulted in many people losing their employer-sponsored health insurance, businesses “hanging on, strapped for crash,” and laid bare the “enormous” inequities in access to health care, as aiding his argument.
“In the middle of a health care crisis, we have a health insurance crisis,” Lesser said.
Lamont is not the only Democrat that Lesser has to convince. Wood, his co-chair, proposed an amendment diluting the public option bill, requiring the state-run plan to follow the same rules as fully insured insurance companies, among other changes.
Wood said Tuesday that it will take buy in from multiple parties to come up with a plan that can gain enough support to become law.
“It is not just benchmarking. It is not just insurance. It is not just cost of care. It is not just support from the federal government, but it is all of us working together to drive costs down and to provide better affordable quality insurance and thats what we’ve been working very hard on this session,” she said.
Besides lauding the advance of Lamont’s bill, Tuesday’s online news conference, which Lesser and Wood attended, highlighted benefits under $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan for those who buy their health insurance through the state’s Obamacare exchange, Access Health CT. The massive federal stimulus package increases and expands eligibility for premium subsidies for most who buy subsidized health insurance through state exchanges.
About 17 percent of Access Health CT’s customers pay no premium at all because they receive a big enough subsidy to cover the entire payment. Under the rescue plan, the percentage of no-cost customers goes up to 50 percent, said James Michel, CEO of Access Health CT.
On average, Connecticut households on the exchange will save an average of more than $200 per month, Michel said. He encouraged residents to go to the exchange on May 1, when the changes are expected to be implemented, to see what options might be available to them.
On at least this point, those in attendance at Tuesday’s virtual event agreed: the rescue plan is expected to aid the debate on healthcare reform.
As Lesser put it: “All of a sudden getting a handle on health care costs is not a great white whale. It’s something we can actually do this year and the state is going to do our part.”