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Connecticut health plans are often characterized unfairly as being opposed to any meaningful health care reform. This is simply not the case. Over the last year, we have been strongly engaged in the state debate to increase access for the uninsured and to find ways to reduce health costs.

A year ago, I was asked to co-chair a panel called the Connecticut Health Insurance Policy Council. We convened a broad group of business and health plan leaders including the Connecticut Business and Industry Association (CBIA), the Business Council of Fairfield County, the Metro Hartford Alliance, and major employers such as Pitney Bowes, Xerox and United Technologies Corporation. Together, we produced a set of recommendations for covering Connecticut’s uninsured and improving the health of our state’s residents. You can find that report today on my company’s website: www.connecticare.com.

After our report was published, the state’s hospitals through the Connecticut Hospital Association, agreed to join with the Connecticut Business and Industry Association and the Connecticut Association of Health Plans in forming an impressive coalition to advocate principles for meaningful reform. Most recently, business groups such as the Executive Committee of the Bridgeport Regional Business Council have also endorsed these principles:

1. Increasing reimbursements to health care providers under HUSKY and other state programs.
2. Expanding Medicaid and vigorously increasing enrollment of children in HUSKY.
3. Creating new, refundable tax credits and/or premium subsidies to encourage small businesses to provide health insurance, and to support the costs to individuals of participating in employer-based plans or purchasing individual coverage.
4. Paving the way to permit HUSKY recipients to enroll into employer-based coverage using state and federal dollars.
5. Creating a Commission on Healthy Lifestyles to promote healthy lifestyles and wellness programs.
6. Making more health care cost and quality information available to consumers, developing evidence-based standards of care and practice guidelines, and promoting the wider use of electronic medical record technology.

Our coalition of businesses, hospitals and health plans has been actively advocating our legislature for action on these practical steps. If we are successful, we can accomplish significant reform that is practical, economically sustainable, and will help the people most in need.

These steps make vastly more sense than trying to throw out our current employer-sponsored health insurance system and replace it with a government-run system that would be horribly inefficient, would stifle medical innovation, and would lead to unsustainable growth in government spending and higher taxes.

Such a government run system would lead to intolerable waiting times for essential health care services and would not be tolerated in our distinct American culture which places such a high value on access, choice, and customer service.

Health plans are fully committed to seeing that every Connecticut citizen has access to necessary health care services. Yet, true health care reform needs to take us well beyond universal access. We need to focus on getting more value for what we’re already spending and more importantly we need to focus on how to get us living healthier lifestyles. The money we could save by living healthier will go a long way toward bringing health care premiums under control and providing health insurance for our 300,000 citizens who currently lack it.

With our unique consensus among the organizations most committed to the current health system and a core set of health care reform principles, the Legislature should “seize the day.” If they do, our health care system here in Connecticut can move toward being a competitive advantage for our state.

It would be a shame if our state legislators passed on this opportunity to enact meaningful health care reform. The people most committed to improving the system are here and ready to be a part of the solution.

Written by Mickey Herbert, President and CEO of ConnectiCare, 5-30-07