Connecticut Coalition for Universal Health Care   

by John R. Battista, M.D. and Justine A. McCabe, Ph.D.

Connecticut Coalition For Universal Health Care

January 9, 2001

This Act would insure payment for all medically necessary services, medications, and long term care for all residents of the State of Connecticut. Residents could choose any willing licensed health caregiver. Decisions about health care would be made by licensed health caregivers and their patients without insurer pre-approval.

This health insurance program would be administered by a health care trust governed by a thirty seven member board of trustees composed of health care advocates, health care givers, health care organizations, taxpayer representatives, health care experts and state officials, accountable to state government. Benefits and fees would be determined by this trust in collaboration with a consumer advisory council, a health care professional advisory council, and a health care organizations advisory council. Initial fees shall be set to sustain the income of health caregivers.

The Act primarily lowers health care costs by mandating reductions in administrative costs and purchasing medications and durable medical equipment in bulk. Additional savings may occur by determining fees for health caregivers, establishing global budgets for health care organizations, coordinating state wide medical services, consolidating health care insurance programs, reviewing health care practices in terms of quality assurance standards, and encouraging preventive, primary health care services. The Act mandates that any increase in the health care trust’s budget be less than the percentage of increase in the national health care budget for the preceding year after a five year adjustment period.

Connecticut Tobacco Settlement Funds would be used to enroll residents and establish the infrastructure for this health insurance program. Year-to-year funding would be obtained from existing state and federal health care funds as well as employer health care payroll taxes, family health care income taxes, and excise taxes on activities detrimental to health.

The Act mandates that the cost to the average large employer be equal to or less than current health care insurance expenses. The payroll taxes of smaller employers are to be progressively decreased from the amount paid by large employers, as a function of the number of their employees, in order to assure affordability. Health care insurance premiums would be collected only from those families whose income is above 185% of the federal poverty level. Premiums for families are constrained so that the average family would pay an amount less than the cost of their current insurance program and less than the cost of private insurance for those benefits of the Act not covered by their current insurance program.

The Act mandates that the trust seek to transfer all direct health care services that the trust inherits from existing state health care programs into the private, not for profit, health care sector. The Act provides for up to one percent of revenues to be utilized during the first three years of the insurance program to retrain workers displaced by the Act.