Health Insurance Cost Increases Ahead

Lawmakers are still considering a number of bills that will drive up the cost of health insurance.
SB 815 establishes a Healthcare Policy Commission that would be charged with reviewing a number of important policy issues. However, as currently drafted, the bill also gives this new group the power to assess insurers and doctors.
That means that this new commission–without any checks and balances–gets an uncapped budget to pay for its operations.
Any new assessment will just drive up the cost of healthcare in Connecticut because the costs will be passed on to consumers.  This is especially ironic since part of the commission’s work is to look at healthcare costs.
More mandates
What’s more, lawmakers are likely to vote on adding even more health benefit mandates to Connecticut’s mountainous and costly total.
Health benefits mandates are procedures and services the state requires smaller employers to buy coverage for in their health plans.
The state picks the services it deems important (adding new ones all the time) and forces smaller employers to buy them in their plans. This really hits smaller employers because they are fully insured–meaning they buy their insurance from insurance companies.
Conversely, most larger employers choose to “self-insure” and take on the risk themselves for their employees’ healthcare, and therefore are exempt from these state laws mandating benefits.
For more information, contact CBIA’s Jennifer Herz at 860.244.1921 | jennifer.herz@cbia.com | @CBIAjherz