Just 4 percent of the state’s 2,500 dentists accept HUSKY insurance. That was but one example of the broken health care system Williams said is too expensive not to fix. At a standing-room-only forum Monday night at Hamden’s Miller senior center, Williams was joined by almost a dozen other state legislators, who came to support the Democrats’ health care reform plan, HealthFirst Connecticut. The basic idea is eventually to create a single payer system by expanding Medicare to cover the whole population. Click here for a fuller explanation.

Williams repeated several times that, despite more advanced reform efforts in other states than Connecticut currently enjoys, the Democrats’ plan would be the first of its kind in the nation. It would meet the five criteria laid out by the Institute of Medicine to be universal, continuous, affordable to both individuals and to society, sustainable, and enhance health and well-being. And it’s not just an economic issue (see graph showing the explosion in health care costs), Williams said, but a human rights issue.

Other horror stories abounded. One woman told of a 19-year-old youth in New Haven who had diabetes and didn’t know it, because he had no health insurance and hadn’t seen a doctor. He went to bed one day feeling tired, went into a diabetic coma and died.

Currently about 350,000 people — one-tenth of the state’s population — have no health insurance. Many more have inadequate insurance, covering only catastrophic care or having annual deductibles as high as $10,000. Williams noted that half the personal bankruptcies filed in the U.S. are due to medical debt, and that 80 percent of filers had some form of insurance.

The Dems’ plan would immediately reduce the number of uninsured residents by increasing eligibility for HUSKY; increasing eligibility for Medicaid coverage for low-income single adults; keeping young people on their parents’ insurance until they reach the age of 26. “That’s about 140,000 folks who currently have no health insurance who would be covered,” Williams said. That’s Phase One. Phase Two is to put together a pool of people that could be self-insured, getting economy of scale, recruiting businesses to the new model who see that savings can be made while care is improved.

The plan also promotes electronic prescription forms and electronic medical records to improve quality of health care and save lives. It would also emphasize managing chronic conditions so they don’t turn into medical emergencies, which are much more expensive and have worse outcomes for patients.

During the discussion, Steve Wolfson (pictured) said he is a doctor, a patient, an employer and an employee, and sees the need for drastic health care reform from all those perspectives. He said the fact that the insurance industry can deny care — for a lifetime — to individuals with pre-existing conditions sets the notion of insurance on its head. Click here to hear more of his thoughts.

Medical social worker Sue Frankewicz (pictured) highlighted the role of the Connecticut-based insurance industry and the off-the-charts salaries and perks of the CEOs of those private companies as things to consider when fighting for more affordable, more equitable health coverage for Connecticut residents. Click here for more.

Former State Rep Nancy Beals asked to what extent the plan is in the budget and how the business community is responding. Williams said it’s in the budget to the tune of $300 million. He said he expects opposition from some within the business community, but said that many are so burdened by providing health insurance — or can’t provide it at all — “that affects dramatically their economic sustainability, and their competitiveness. Everybody is getting it that the same old same old is taking us off the cliff economically and we must change. So I’m seeing a tipping point in the business community towards the fact that significant reform is necessary.”