Employers Add Their Voice In State’s Health Care Debate

HARTFORD (AP) — Connecticut’s insurance industry is voicing its views on health care in the state, offering ideas such as expanded government programs and incentives for consumers to shape up.

The Connecticut Health Insurance Policy Council Inc unveiled a report Monday that says a public-private sector partnership could help cut the number of uninsured residents in half in three years.

The proposal combines previous ideas such as allowing insurance policy sales to the uninsured that omit some state-mandated insurance benefits to reduce premiums. The council also advocates permitting policies with new coverage limits on certain services.

Legislative debate has focused on how Connecticut should insure an estimated 298,000 to 407,000 residents without health coverage and how to improve health care access to Medicaid recipients.

The council is a coalition of health insurers, business groups, and large employers.

Members of the council say the ideas presented in the “Framework for Health Care Reform for Connecticut’’ may be familiar, but employers and insurers say they need to do more.

The private sector is “pointing the gun at itself and saying ‘You’re not doing the job well enough,’” said Robert Patricelli, co-chairman of the council and chief executive of Evolution Benefits and Women’s Health USA in Avon. “We’ve got to stop pointing the finger at the government and we’ve got to say part of the problem is us.”

Key elements of the council’s plan is to improve Connecticut residents’ health, reducing the cost of health care and insurance and giving businesses a competitive advantage. The council endorses the establishment of a new state Commission on Healthy Lifestyles and says Connecticut should try to become the nation’s healthiest state by 2020.

More employers should provide financial incentives to workers to stop smoking, lose weight, and otherwise take better care of themselves, council members say. For example, Pitney Bowes gives employees a discount of up to $225 on premiums for not smoking, eating five servings of fruits and vegetables a day, exercising 30 minutes daily, using seat belts, and making progress toward a body mass index of 25 or less.

Many of the council’s proposals would require government action and funding.

The council says the state should establish subsidies that could provide tax credits and subsidies to reduce the cost of insurance for certain groups and low-income individuals.

The state also should further expand efforts to enroll people in Medicaid, especially children in the HUSKY B program, the council says.

And it proposes expanding Medicaid with federal money to cover single adults and childless couples who earn up to 100 percent of the federal poverty level, replacing the state-funded State Administered General Assistance Program. Medicaid’s HUSKY programs don’t cover childless adults.

The 2006 federal guidelines set the poverty level at $9,800 for a single adult and $20,000 for a family of four.

The council recommends that Medicaid preserve its low co-payments but reduce benefits to conform more with commercial health plans and stretching Medicaid funding further. That could require consumers to spend more out-of-pocket to get care.

In addition, Medicaid reimbursement to doctors and hospitals must be increased to achieve universal health care, access to care has to be improved, the council said.