Connecticut Might Insure Nearly All Without Upheaval

Gov. Rell’s response to the clamor about the medically uninsured is less of a proposal than a series of questions.

The first is: Can state government assemble a large and healthy enough pool of the uninsured that private insurers will be prepared to offer them a basic policy at a cost of $250 per person per month, $58 per week, without any subsidy from the government? The governor seems to think so, but many people close to the issue are skeptical.

The second question is whether most of the medically uninsured people in Connecticut, estimated from 200,000 to 400,000, could afford such a policy. Of course the poorest could not, but they already qualify for state government’s medical insurance for the indigent or its "Husky" program for the working poor — in which, out of ignorance, negligence or incompetence, many uninsured people don’t enroll despite their qualification. What people can afford is a question of judgment that will be answered with wild differences as long as it is left to individuals, since there are people who think they can live without medical insurance but not without cell phones, big-screen TVs, and expensive sneakers.

without any realistic prospect for getting insurance?

If the answer is fewer than, say, 200,000 people, the solution to the problem of the medically uninsured in Connecticut (insofar as there can be a state solution rather than a national one) would seem to be to relax the income qualifications for the Husky program and to require people to carry insurance for themselves and their children — pretty much what the Heritage Foundation proposed 15 years ago, Massachusetts has just done, and California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has just proposed for his state.

And that would bring Connecticut back to Square 1, the issue over which state government long has been dissembling even as some political leaders have begun to thump their chests about making sure that everyone has medical insurance. For state government has been doing a lousy job of providing insurance even to the poorest people, the people

If the answer is fewer than, say, 200,000 people, the solution to the problem of the medically uninsured in Connecticut (insofar as there can be a state solution rather than a national one) would seem to be to relax the income qualifications for the Husky program and to require people to carry insurance for themselves and their children — pretty much what the Heritage Foundation proposed 15 years ago, Massachusetts has just done, and California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has just proposed for his state.

And that would bring Connecticut back to Square 1, the issue over which state government long has been dissembling even as some political leaders have begun to thump their chests about making sure that everyone has medical insurance. For state government has been doing a lousy job of providing insurance even to the poorest people, the people

already covered by welfare insurance and the Husky program. The fees paid to doctors and hospitals by welfare and Husky insurance are so much below market rates and actual costs that doctors are declining to treat patients or making them wait a long time for appointments. That is, as much as state government likes to congratulate itself for them, welfare and "Husky" insurance policies aren’t quite basic policies at all. They depend increasingly on the charity of the medical profession and the shifting of costs to patients with private insurance, who are charged more to make up the underpayment by government policies.

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