Face the Facts: Controlling High Healthcare Costs for State, Municipal Employees

Controlling the skyrocketing cost of healthcare has been a challenge for Connecticut lawmakers for years now.

One of the people at the center of trying to achieve that is newly-elected Comptroller Sean Scanlon

Mike Hydeck: You had a release this week on something called the partnership plan. For people who don't know what the state's partnership plan does, and how it affects municipal employees, can you explain that?

Sean Scanlon: So the state comptroller's office buys and negotiates healthcare for 300,000 people in the state. And through that leverage, we are able to offer affordable rates for healthcare here in the state for our employees and our retirees. And a few years ago, what we did was we created the partnership plan to essentially give that leverage buying power to the municipalities so that cities and towns in Connecticut could take advantage of their relationship with the state to get the best deals for their police officers, firefighters, librarians, public workers. And that together is what allows us to offer really good and quality affordable coverage to both state employees and municipal workers here in the state of Connecticut.

Mike Hydeck: So in your report this week, you said last year, it took in less in premiums than it paid out in healthcare claims. Does that extra cost in the program get passed on to the people enrolled?

Sean Scanlon: It doesn't get passed on to the people enrolled. Last year was an outlier. We're all learning lessons coming out of COVID. And just about everybody on both the public and private side of the insurance ledger got last year wrong. There was a lot more utilization. Essentially, utilization is whenever somebody uses their healthcare. They had projected it to be about COVID levels, when people really weren't going to the doctor for more than the routine things they had to do. That changed things a little bit, we ended up having a difficult year. But right now in the current year that we're in, things are looking much better. And going forward, we know how to plan because of what happened last year. The partnership plan is very strong, and it remains a very, very good option for municipalities. And I look forward to working with them this year to continue making sure that that's going to be a good product going forward.

Mike Hydeck: So it has to be managed. Say, for some reason, the finances take a turn for the worse. Is there a scenario, worst case scenario you would see, where you'd have to try to access surplus money to try to balance the books in the partnership plan? Or is that not an option?

Sean Scanlon: I don't think that we're in that position right now, Mike. I think that we're really looking good this fiscal year. And I think we can continue to make sure that we're making the proper adjustments when it comes to rate setting so that we don't have to go and do anything on the back end. We're adjusting the rates appropriately on the front end. And therefore, that issue of having more claims than premiums is not going to happen going forward.

Mike Hydeck: So your predecessor, former comptroller Kevin Lembo, pushed hard for years for a public option. So much so the CEOs of the major insurance companies based here in Connecticut threatened, or at least hinted, that they might leave if Governor Lamont supported it. Where do you stand when it comes to a public option?

Sean Scanlon: Well, look, I've always supported the concept of a public option. But my focus right now as the new comptroller is to work with the governor, to work with the legislature, on ways that we can address the underlying goal of the public option, which was how can we get more people access to more affordable healthcare. Public option is one way to do it. But there are other ways and that's what I'm focused on right now, especially when it comes to prescription drug costs, which is something that the governor and I will be working very closely on this session. And we'll be making a major announcement about soon.

Mike Hydeck: That's going to be a huge challenge. Looking forward to that major announcement. One last question, do you have a benchmark, when you can say, 'look, I am seeing real progress when it comes to lowering healthcare costs overall,' whether it be prescription or when it comes to just paying your premiums? Like a family of four has to pay 2% less this time around. Like is there a benchmark or a goal that you're looking for?

Sean Scanlon: Well, there are a lot of benchmarks that exist out there, Mike, but for the average family, like the one that I grew up in, there's no benchmark that's ever going to be good enough for the fact that you're just seeing costs go up and up and up. And so what I am trying to do, and what the governor is trying to do, and what everyone is trying to do, is just find ways that we can chip away at that. There's no silver bullet solution to making health care more affordable. It's a very hard thing to solve. The United States of America has a very interesting way of doing healthcare compared to pretty much everywhere else in the western world. And we're a bit of an outlier when it comes to the cost. So trying to put that back and make sense of that is very difficult, but we can make progress. And I think what we're focused on this session, and going forward is, what are the ways that we can chip away at the problem and make it a little bit more and more affordable going forward for that average family, that average small business, and the people of Connecticut. And I think you'll see some progress on that this year. Just like you saw some progress on that in the last few years.