Despite Dollars and Sense, Committee Pushes Risky Healthcare Scheme

With the price tag for Connecticut taxpayers still unknown, the Public Health Committee has raised a bill aimed at creating a state-run healthcare system. The proposal, known as the SustiNet plan, ultimately would put a costly new state bureaucracy in direct competition with market-based private companies that sell health insurance.

The government-based plan also would make the state the self-insured payer of participants' medical claims, requiring untold–and unaccounted for–millions more in reserves.

SustiNet’s undetermined cost is especially troubling as Connecticut’s finances buckle under a $3.7 billion budget deficit and $70 billion in unfunded liabilities—chief among them long-term healthcare obligations. 

If passed, SustiNet would become yet another unfunded liability for Connecticut—adding to taxpayers’ burdens and further compromising the state’s already stressed bond rating.

SustiNet is the creation of the Universal Health Care Foundation. Through all of the plan’s versions, its goal has remained the same: to significantly increase state government's control of healthcare—at the same time public opinion wants just the opposite.

Now the Public Health Committee is pledging to advance the plan through legislation aimed at bringing about the transition to state-run healthcare.

Along with the rest of the business community (including the National Federation of Independent Businesses, the Connecticut Business Group on Health and other companies and organizations), CBIA is committed to seeing that the state does not simply increase its control of healthcare at the expense of its residents and taxpayers.