The director of a small non-profit in New Haven was worried about that a new state universal health plan might mean she’d have a harder time covering her older, less healthy workers. She was relieved to find out that’s not how it would work.
Barbara Tinney (pictured above) is executive director of the New Haven Family Alliance, learned those details during a nitty-gritty discussion of a proposal before the state legislature called SustiNet. The discussion took place Thursday night during a live airing of “21st Century Conversations” on CTV.
SustiNet, among other features, would expand a government health insurance program to bring in employees of not-for-profits and many others who are uninsured or underinsured right now. Many people would have a choice of choosing the new plan or sticking with an older private plan.
Tinney said she feared that her younger, healthier employees would go on that public program while her agency woudl end up paying more money to cover the less healthy workers. Tinney learned that under SustiNet, all the employees of a business or nonprofit would have to join together, or none could. That’s part of the bill that passed the General Assembly’s Public Health Committee in late March. Ihe point is to prevent the cherrypicking of healthy individuals by any insurance provider.
SustiNet was proposed by the Universal Healthcare Foundation of Connecticut. It was the culmination of more than two years of meetings with people from all walks of life with every kind of health coverage or lack thereof. It would create a large insurance pool to bargain for lower rates for currently uninsured or underinsured people; cut health costs through digitizing medical records linked to a central database; create “medical homes” that offer patients round-the-clock central coordination of their health care as well as guidance in managing it; and require “periodic quality review” of providers and “evidence-based medicine. Click here for mroe details.
SustiNet was spearheaded by the Universal Healthcare Foundation of Connecticut after more than two years of meetings with people from all walks of life with every kind of health coverage or lack thereof. Paul Wessel represented the foundation on Thursday night’s CTV program. Democratic North Haven State Rep. Steve Fontana (pictured to Wessel’s right) was also on the “hot seats” in the studio, peppered with questions from host N’Zinga Shani and a dozen people in the audience. Shani mentioned that Republican State Sen. Len Fasano had also been invited and his office confirmed his attendance, but didn’t show up.
Sue Feldman runs the Village of Power in Dixwell, which supports women working on their recovery from addictions. Some are on SAGA, the state health insurance plan for low income adults. “There’s a terrible process called the ‘spend down,’” she said, in which those on SAGA undergo redeterminations of eligibility, and those making just over the very low income limit lose their health coverage. She said if her clients go to jail they lose their coverage, and it’s a nightmare to get back on when they are released. Would SustiNet improve their lives? she wanted to know.
The answer was that SustiNet is portable. That coverage moves with an individual through job changes, family changes (like divorce) and other personal changes. It would also not deny coverage based on pre-existing medical conditions.
Others on the panel expressed concern about a lack of dentists who will see low-income children on the HUSKY plan; about young adults who have no coverage and end up using hospital emergency departments for their care; about would-be entrepreneurs who can’t afford to leave a steady job to develop their brilliant ideas because they need their employer-paid health benefits; about the emphasis on illness, not on wellness.
Wessel explained that SustiNet would bring state employees, Husky and SAGA users together in one large, self-insured health plan, that could gradually expand to include the uninsured and under-insured, the self-employed, and employees of small businesses, municipalities and non-profits.
After the show, Fontana explained that the bill must pass through several more committees before coming up for a vote on the floor of the state House and Senate. When a reporter asked if it could possibly pass this year, he responded that certain pieces are likely to pass. Possible examples are creating a medical home for patients, digitizing health records, and uniting state employees, Husky and SAGA users into a bigger pool. Then supporters could keep advocating for the whole plan. “It’s time,” he told an audience member, “to make some noise” in favor of significant health care reform.
Connecticut's economy needs this bill.
For the first time, our small businesses would have access to decent, affordable health care coverage.
These small businesses create 8 out of 10 new jobs in the state. But with premiums rising so fast, they can't afford the insurance that would keep their employees - and themselves - safe from poor health AND from bankruptcy. They can't grow. They can't survive.
Since 2001, more than 15% of the state's small businesses have had to eliminate health benefits. If a business has fewer than 25 workers, those workers are twice as likely to be uninsured.
FACT: NO comprehensive health care reform = NO economic recovery = NO security for any of us.
For years, and this year again, we've heard excuses from the people profiting by selling over-priced, increasingly-useless insurance products about WHY real reform is impossible; WHY we have to go even more slooooowly; WHY "It's all government's fault!"; WHY "We DESERVE our high profits and multi-million-dollar executive salaries and our bonuses and our private planes."
Anything to delay reform that will keep Connecticut physically AND fiscally healthy.
Sure, those who hate government and everything it does (fight fires? kill hostage-holding pirates?) will whine. That's what they do best. They all should have a cup of tea and chill.
Sure, true believers in completely unregulated markets for financial services (can you spell "A-I-G?") will tell us to "Just wait another 20 years - competition will lead to coverage for everyone." Apparently, they slept through the last year of obscene corporate greed, corruption and self-induced collapse.
And, as always, insurance industry flacks will talk up their "sincere concern for all of humanity" and the absolute NECESSITY to maintain the status quo. After all, that's what they're paid for (by OUR premiums).
Please. We're tired of it and we're bored by it and we stopped believing it a long time ago. Half the people who lost their homes in Connecticut in the last year listed medical debt as a key reason for their financial collapse.
Let's all stop complaining and pass an effective health care reform bill this year.