‘Public option’ divides Dems seeking health care reforms

One bill creates a state-sponsored insurance plan, Lamont’s would regulate drug prices

State Sen. Matt Lesser’s appearance at a press 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.

At play in the health care debate are several competing bills. The one championed by Lesser would create a statesponsored 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 state 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 healthcare 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 2009, 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 press 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 healthcare, how we can bring that down,” the governor said.

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 General Assembly’s Insurance and Real Estate Committee, of which Lesser and Rep. Kerry Wood are cochairs, 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 staterun plan to follow the same rules as fully-insured insurance companies, among other changes.

Besides lauding the advance of Lamont’s bill, Tuesday’s online press conference, which Wood also attended, also 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.

Currently, about 17 percent of Access Health CT’s current 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 nocost 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.

Michel 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.