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May 2006 — Vol. 84, No. 4

FROM THE PRESIDENT

State, private sector must work together on education and health care reforms

By John R. Rathgeber

CBIA President and CEO

Two issues businesses are growing more alarmed about — the education of our future workforce and the cost of health care — received a lot of attention at the board of directors’ March meeting. The board adopted resolutions on both topics, urging the state to take specific actions to ensure we have a globally competitive workforce and more affordable health care.

You can read about their education concerns in our cover story and related article, so I won’t go into detail about them here.

As for health care, the board noted that soaring costs are significantly hurting their ability to compete globally and to create more jobs here. To make health care affordable and accessible to more people, both the state and the private sector should focus on controlling costs.

Here is what the board believes a cost-reduction effort must include:

  • Improved health care quality to reduce medical errors and inefficiency — for example, through the use of e-medical records and pay-for-performance incentives that compensate providers who deliver quality, cost-efficient care.
  • More consumer information, including quality and cost data. This will help drive quality by holding health care providers more accountable for their performance and will help consumers make informed health care choices.
  • Greater flexibility in benefit plan designs to give employers and employees lower-cost options and more control over health care decisions.
  • Review of all mandates and elimination of those that drive up costs without providing sufficient benefit.
  • Medical malpractice reforms to address the high cost of liability insurance.
  • Government-sponsored health benefits that are more in line with private-sector benefits and are properly funded in order to reduce uncompensated-care cost burdens on private-sector payers.

CBIA will be working closely with legislators and the governor’s administration to make both the education and health care reforms top state priorities.

I want to thank all of the board members who traveled to the March meeting to help guide CBIA’s staff in our work to make Connecticut’s business climate more competitive.