Maine’s Experience Should Give Connecticut Pause in Pursuing Politicized Health Insurance Rate Approval Process

SB 194 – An Act Concerning Rate Approvals For Individual Health Insurance Policies purports to be responding to real concerns about the impact of health insurance premium increases. However, it is a flawed response, as best illustrated by Maine’s experience, which has a similar politicized process.

The Maine Heritage Policy Center’s Tarren Bragdon has teamed up with the Yankee Institute’s Fergus Cullen to author a white paper on Connecticut’s competitive individual market for health care and warn against politicizing the rate approval process.

Download the White Paper now!

HARTFORD –The Yankee Institute for Public Policy unveiled its TweetCT Project today, their latest effort to improve transparency and communication among Connecticut’s elected officials. The tool is available online at www.TweetCT.org.

“Transparency opens government to everyone,” said Heath W. Fahle, the Yankee Institute’s Policy Director. “This new website gives Connecticut’s citizens the ability to connect with our leaders in government.”

The social media platform Twitter has grown dramatically in popularity over the last several years and now features more than six million users worldwide. TweetCT.org connects Connecticut residents with their leaders via a simple yet powerful tool that allows users to search for their local elected officials and interact with them.

“More information produces better decisions,” continued Fahle. “For elected officials, this means hearing from their constituents before key votes. For citizens, more information about their leaders will help them make better decisions about who represents them in Hartford or Washington.”

The new tool, located on the Internet at www.TweetCT.org, is an important tool for increasing transparency in state government. Local residents will be able to identify their elected officials (US Congress, State Senator, and State Representative) by putting in their zip code. The site also allows users to follow elected officials, retweet preferred messages, and share pictures and videos.

According to the Yankee Institute’s analysis, there are 151 State Representatives, 36 State Senators, 6 constitutional officers, 5 Members of Congress, and two US Senators from Connecticut. Of these 200 individuals, we identified 28 Twitter users. Over the course of the year, the Yankee Institute hopes to dramatically expand the number of elected officials using Twitter to communicate with Connecticut’s citizens.

Yankee Institute’s program “The Care and Feeding of Connecticut’s Congressmen” has taxpayers grumbling all across Connecticut as they learn about how their Members of Congress spend their hard-earned tax dollars.

The project posted every line item of spending in the Connecticut delegation’s personal congressional offices and has been a popular request from rank-and-file conservatives since Yankee unveiled it last summer.

The project has incurred attacks from two of Connecticut’s five members, which only served to bring additional attention to the project.

It is a staple in Yankee’s speeches to local taxpayer organizations and other supportive activists, and even highlights fun information like which Member spent the most on bottled water.

John Kramer, SPNovation judge, and Vice President for Communications at the Institute for Justice had the following to say about the program: “An innovative program doesn’t need to be an expensive one.

Thanks to the Yankee Institute’s research and promotion, Connecticut lawmakers and their largess are being properly taken to account. In the end, these government fat cats are spending our money. The Yankee Institute’s work reminds them that we’re watching and that our tax dollars must be spent with care.”

NEW STUDY PREDICTS SUSTINET WILL COST $2 BILLION ANNUALLY

HARTFORD – The Connecticut version of Obamacare called SustiNet could add more than $2 billion in new annual spending to the state budget with no means to pay for it, a new study by the Yankee Institute finds.

“Dr. SustiNet’s Prescription for Big Government Healthcare” rings the alarm about how much the ambitious government-driven heath care plan passed over Gov. M. Jodi Rell’s veto in 2009 is likely to cost Connecticut taxpayers. The report finds SustiNet’s backers significantly overstated the number of uninsured in Connecticut, dramatically understated the likely costs of SustiNet, and ignored many of the effort’s likely negative side effects.

Highlights of the report:

• Connecticut spends $4.1 billion a year on its existing taxpayer-funded state health care
programs, including Medicaid and three state health insurance programs
• SustiNet will cost Connecticut taxpayers at least $2 billion more in new, annual government
spending
• 90 percent of Connecticut residents have insurance coverage.
• Of the 343,000 people who do not have health insurance, most are either eligible for existing
government-sponsored health insurance programs, can afford some form of health insurance and choose to forego it, or are only temporarily without coverage.
• SustiNet underestimates the cost of expanding the HUSKY program; understates the cost of subsidizing insurance; ignores the tendency of taxpayer-subsidized insurance plans to cause those with existing private insurance to switch to government plans; and ignores “adverse selection,” by which new enrollees have higher medical expenses than current enrollees.
• SustiNet’s unpleasant side effects will include higher taxes, reduced employment, longer waits, higher costs, fewer choices, and rationing.

“Connecticut residents who are worried about the big government health care bills being debated in Washington should be just as concerned about SustiNet,” said Fergus Cullen, executive director of the Yankee Institute. “SustiNet is to the Connecticut health care system what Obamacare is to the national health care system. Given Connecticut’s existing budget deficit, it is not realistic to believe the state can afford SustiNet as envisioned by its backers. State officials should revisit the whole idea of SustiNet before it’s too late,” Cullen said.

Cullen emphasizes that the Yankee Institute supports SustiNet’s stated goals of increasing coverage and lowering costs, but the report argues that there are market-based alternatives to SustiNet’s big government approach to health insurance change that can achieve some of SustiNet’s stated goals at a fraction of its likely costs. These include:

• Allowing Connecticut residents to purchase health insurance across state lines
• Relaxing Scope of Practice and Certificate of Need laws that artificially limit supply and drive
up costs
• Reforming existing state health insurance programs

Download the full report now.