Will Connecticut Cover the Uninsured?

Connecticut’s state Senate Democratic leaders have gotten more real than anyone so far in pursuing medical insurance coverage for all.

The Senate Democrats propose to spend $450 million more per year to increase payments to medical providers for treating people with state-sponsored insurance and to expand eligibility for such insurance. This, the Democrats figure, would hasten treatment for thousands of people who now are being turned away because state payments are so much below market rates and would extend coverage to about half the estimated 260,000 people in the state who lack medical insurance — provided that those people or their parents cooperated.

Gov. Rell wants the state to organize the uninsured into a large and healthy pool that insurers will offer them a basic medical policy for $250 per person per month. But there is no hard evidence that any insurers

will offer a basic policy for that price, and there is much evidence that many of the uninsured cannot afford to pay $250 per month. They well may continue to gamble on their health and their children’s.

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already has reached the limit on spending allowed by the state Constitution,.

It is not much help to propose spending more to solve the insurance problem. It would be more helpful to

It is not much help to propose spending more to solve the insurance problem. It would be more helpful to

find that kind of money.

Before the Senate Democrats again start chanting "millionaire’s tax," a tax the governor is pledged to veto, they should remember that they already have promised the revenue from such a tax to "property tax reform" and a dozen other undertakings, and that a "millionaire’s tax" probably wouldn’t raise half as much as would be necessary to cover the uninsured as they have proposed.

The governor is right to be concerned about spending, which the Senate Democrats are not yet. And since the spending cap in the constitution was offered to the people in 1992, in exchange for their having accepted the burden of the state income tax the previous year, it ought to mean something, for the sake of the integrity of state government.

Before the Senate Democrats again start chanting "millionaire’s tax," a tax the governor is pledged to veto, they should remember that they already have promised the revenue from such a tax to "property tax reform" and a dozen other undertakings, and that a "millionaire’s tax" probably wouldn’t raise half as much as would be necessary to cover the uninsured as they have proposed.

The governor is right to be concerned about spending, which the Senate Democrats are not yet. And since the spending cap in the constitution was offered to the people in 1992, in exchange for their having accepted the burden of the state income tax the previous year, it ought to mean something, for the sake of the integrity of state government.

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