Health Care Reform

Needs To Be About Health

The Connecticut Health Insurance Policy Council issued a report on Monday that concluded the number of uninsured residents in the state could be cut in half in the next three years through cooperative efforts by the public and private sectors. This is hopeful news to a lot of people, even using the council’s conservative estimate of 298,000 uninsured persons in the state. Some estimates put the number of state residents without health insurance as high as 407,000.

The report comes at a time when Connecticut, like other states across the country, is reviewing health care reform measures to fix a system that is placing crushing financial burdens on individuals, small businesses, and even physicians who find their practices have become increasingly shackled by liability insurance premiums.

The council represents a coalition of health insurers, business groups, and large employers, and its recommendations include improving the overall health of all residents though incentives to stop smoking, lose weight, and to adopt healthier and more active lifestyles. This component of the plan deserves a place in whatever health care reform package emerges for the state. Some area companies, like Pitney Bowes, are already encouraging employees to be more responsible for their own health. Pitney Bowes offers discounts of up to $225 on premiums if employees don’t smoke, use seatbelts, exercise 30 minutes a day, eat five servings of fruits and vegetables a day, and make progress toward achieving a body mass index of 25 or less. Healthy employees are more productive and less costly for businesses in the long run.

Other council proposals appear to be aimed more at enhancing the insurance industry’s already impressive bottom line through tax credits and insurance premium subsidies from the state for low-income individuals and removing the industry’s obligation to offer some currently mandated benefits. The council also wants to cut back on some of the required benefits for Medicaid recipients. Even without these profit-protection measures, financial analysts have predicted 15 to 20 percent earnings growth for the health insurance industry this year. If Connecticut is to join other states with universal health care insurance initiatives, like Massachusetts, Maine, Vermont, and now California, it must call for shared sacrifice and compromise among individuals, employers, health insurance companies, health care providers, and government. Some of these industry-backed profit-protection measures may need to be scaled back or left behind altogether.

As our state legislators proceed with their deliberations over health care reform, their goal should be to bring the best health care possible to all of the state’s residents. It is a scandal that our state relegates hundreds of thousands of people to a system of health care that begins and ends with an expensive pound of cure dispensed in repeated emergency room visits that offer only the meager promise of unplanned health crisis management, the probability of shortened lives, and millions in unpaid costs passed along to the rest of us. Health care reform that emphasizes preventative medical care, even for those who cannot afford to pay, will save everyone money. But true success for health care reform will come only when health itself, and not the economics of care, becomes the guiding principle in our health care system. We need to return the health insurance industry to an ancillary role, supporting but not interfering with the relationship between patients and their health care professionals.

If through shared sacrifice and compromise, we can pull it off, perhaps Connecticut will become one of the innovative states that will lead the way to an even more elusive goal: national health care reform.