M. Jodi Rell: It costs too much. We don’t have the money. Dan Malloy: It costs too much not to do it.
That basically was where the health care reform debate stood Tuesday between Connecticut’s Republican governor and one of her Democratic potential challengers, as key decisions loomed both in Hartford and D.C.
Malloy, Stamford’s mayor, stopped by Yale-New Haven Hospital to discuss where he differs from Gov. Rell as he pursues an “exploratory committee” campaign for a 2010 Democratic gubernatorial nomination run. He blasted Rell for vetoing two bills last week aimed at expanding health care coverage. (Click on the play arrow to watch some of his remarks.)
He was on his way to Hartford rally urging Rell to sign two more health bills. She has a midnight Wednesday signing deadline.
Malloy is identifying health care as a key plank to elevate a second gubernatorial run. (He sought the gubernatorial nomination in 2006; he lost in a party primary.)
“There is no more important issue of our time than making sure that individuals who don’t have health care, have health care,” Malloy said in an interview outside the main Yale-New Haven entrance. “There’s no more strategic job creation debate ongoing in our country than how to make health care more affordable.”
At the heart of his and Rell’s differences is the question of whether expanding government coverage and health mandates costs taxpayers more money and blocks economic revival, or saves the state money in the long run and helps businesses to meet their costs.
That’s where they differ on the two bills Rell vetoed on July 2. One would have required the contractors to continue paying health benefits comparable to state employees’ benefits to outsourced custodians at state office buildings. The other would have required insurance companies to offer incentives for participation in wellness programs, eliminate copayments for colonoscopies, and cover the cost of prosthetic devices, hearing aids for teenagers,
The first bill would have “exposed the State to an unknown and unmanageable level of cost,” Rell wrote in her veto message. “… I cannot sanction wages and benefits that are determined completely outside of the state’s control.”
SImilarly, Rell wrote that it would have been “fiscally irresponsible to burden our recovery with” the “significant future costs” required by the second bill.
“We will not quickly return to the days of a booming economy and budget surpluses. We must therefore be fiscally cautious and prudent so as not to place roadblocks in the way of our eventual recovery,” she wrote. “I am hopeful that at some future point we will have reformed both our state government and our healthcare system to achieve the level of cost savings that will allow us to consider coverage expansions such as those provided in this bill.”
Read the full text of the veto messages here and here.
“Those probably would have been cost-saving bills,” Malloy responded Tuesday. The outsourced custodians about to lose health coverage will end up at hospital emergency rooms — the most expensive form of delivering health care — or on the rolls of the state’s HUSKY program, he argued. And prevention programs prevent costly problems down the line, he said.
Similarly, Malloy said costs would be driven down in the long run through the two bills before Rell to sign. One would lead to families joining larger insurance “pools.” The other that would form a study committee aimed at creating a cost-cutting and universal-access plan called SustiNet. Rell has vetoed similar proposals in the past.
“The pooling bill is really in the realm of what we can do drive costs down, not drive costs up,” Malloy argued. “The SustiNet bill would put us in a position to move rapidly” to qualify for federal money if Congress passes a version of President Obama’s health care reform.
Malloy noted that when he ran for governor three years ago, he called for expanding eligibility to HUSKY, the government health insurance plan for low-income families, to 385 percent of the poverty rate. At the time he was criticized for promoting a plan too dependent on federal approval and federal money, especially with a conservative Republican in the White House. He noted Tuesday that since then, 12 states have received federal approval for similar expansions.
“We know that 785,000 people in Connecticut were without health insurance some time in the past two years; 785,000 out of a population of about 3.2 million is a pretty high percentage,” Malloy said. “ … So any injury that struck, any illness that struck, under current law could be exempted under preexisting language in many health care policies.”
Malloy was asked which version he supports of the two main health proposals floating around D.C.: the House of Representatives version, which includes the so-called “public option,” a government insurance plan to compete with private insurers; or the Senate version, which doesn’t. (Click here and here to see where New Haven U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro and Connecticut U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman stand on that question.)
Mallloy agreed with President Obama, a public option supporter, that private insurers can compete with a government plan — and that they should be required to. He noted that private insurers build in 19 – 21 percent overhead in their plans, whereas public plans’ overhead ranges from 1 to 3 percent.
“If the free market is so wonderful and so strong, it will respond to that competition,” he argued, and insurers will “find efficiencies so a 19 to 21 percent cut is not necessary to make a reasonable profit.”
<b>Finally</b>, someone who is willing to hone in on an important issue. Meanwhile, the rest of the press is talking about a calorie counting bill that was vetoed and this health care issue has been all but forgotten. I am thrilled to see someone like Dan Malloy, who exists outside of Hartford and has done quite well with Stamford, standing up against the mess that has become the capital politics led by our do-nothing-but-veto Governor.