All of Lamont’s New Year’s Eve tests came from CVS
It finally came clear to Gov. Ned Lamont late Wednesday night that Connecticut’s shipment of 3 million rapid, at-home COVID tests wasn’t coming despite his public promises including on CNN. Faced with a dire crisis on the eve of an election year, he decided to ask CEOs for help.
High on his list for the next morning’s calls: Karen S. Lynch, for former Aetna head in Hartford who was promoted last winter to CEO of CVS Health, the Rhode Island-based parent company of CVS and Aetna.
Lamont talked with Lynch, then returned early from a “vacation” to Florida that was all work. Sullenly, he faced the cameras Thursday night to concede the state had been duped on the order of iHealth tests.
By Friday morning, in a leased New Britain warehouse, Lamont was his old self again, color in his face, surrounded by boxes with 426,000 tests that magically appeared overnight. Like an uncle bearing gifts, he was less than precise about where he had found that cache — even as reporters wondered about labels showing the name of CVS, the pharmacy and health insurance giant.
Lynch had come through big-time for her friend. That entire face-saving shipment came from one source: CVS. All of it.
“CVS and Aetna are great partners of the state of Connecticut,” Lamont told Hearst CTInsider Monday. “I made that call as soon as we found out the iHealth stuff may be delayed, temporarily... They stepped right up.”
Exactly where did those tests come from? The musical-COVID-tests acquisition raises the question: Who will not now receive them?
Lamont did not know, and CVS will not say, whether those tests — a variety of brands — were headed for store shelves in Connecticut or other states. What we know is that some were tagged with New York and Rhode Island shipping labels.
Most of them, about 360,000 as of Sunday, wended their way from New Britain to 100 or so cities and towns in Connecticut. From there, they landed into the hands of residents who lined up for them, and first responders, all free of charge.
And we know that the price of the Friday shipment was far higher than the $6.18 per test that the state had agreed to pay for 3 million tests in a deal that turned out to be too good to be true. It’s in the range of $14 a test, closer to the retail price, although the exact amount has not been made public.
This is no time to be frugal, Lamont admonished when a reporter asked the price. Anyway, the money comes from federal pandemic relief.
And more CVS tests are on their way, though Lamont and Dr. Manisha Juthani, the public health commissioners, didn’t know the number on Monday. That’s on top of the 491,000 tests that arrived in the New Britain warehouse Sunday from other sources.
The CVS delivery punctuates what Lamont has been saying since Thursday night in East Hartford: This is the wild West, this cutthroat business of securing rapid tests at a time when the entire world is on the hunt for them. Forget regional cooperation; unlike vaccines, which were allocated by the feds, it’s every state for itself on the open market.
This was a case where it paid to have a governor who’s pals with corporate bosses. Lamont naturally knew Lynch as head of Aetna, in the capital city. Far more favorable to Connecticut than her predecessor at Aetna, who tried to move the company to New York, Lynch is on the board of The Bushnell Center for the Performing Arts, a Hartford cornerstone.
Lynch and Lamont interacted on a sticky legislative issue earlier this year, indirectly. On April 13, Lynch and the heads of four other large insurers with operations in Connecticut wrote a letter to Lamont urging him to hold the line against a publicly directed health plan that they perceived as a threat to their business.
The so-called public option plan has not come to a vote despite strong support among liberal Democrats. Lamont did not take a strong position on it but expressed skepticism about taxpayers taking on insurance risk.
“We thank you, Governor, for recognizing the dangers of this proposal and protecting the residents and businesses of this State from cost increases,” Lynch and the other executives wrote, in a letter hat contained the veiled threat over thousands of jobs: “All of us will have to decide where it will be best to deploy our resources long term.”
When my colleague John Moritz asked Lamont Monday whether that come up in his conversation with Lynch, he snapped, “Are you kidding? No.”
CVS referred all questions to Lamont’s office.
They had also worked together in the coronavirus crisis. On March 10, 2020, at the start of it all, Lynch and other insurance executives issued a statement with Lamont: Connecticut insurers would cover the costs of testing and the state would allow pharmacies to fill 90-day prescriptions.
“We join Governor Lamont in encouraging Connecticut residents to talk to their pharmacists about maintaining adequate supply of medications,” Lynch said in that release.
Lamont, his voice chipper on Friday morning, didn’t mention Lynch but he offered a hint as he talked about the newly arrived tests that delivered a hopeful end to a bad week.
“I can’t tell you whether they were originally meant for other places,” Lamont said. “I can tell you that we went up the food chain, we talked to the most senior people we could, we got ourselves to the front of the line. They’re here.”
As it happened, Lynch delivered a gift to the adopted state where she rose to become one of the most powerful women in the world, on her birthday, the day Lamont called.
“I didn’t know that,” Lamont said Monday. “That would have been good intel. Well, today’s my birthday. We could have celebrated together with the delivery of tests.”