Costs Rise 24% As Few Enroll in New Health Plan

By Mary E. O’Leary, New Haven Register, Conn.

Aug. 2–State contracts for the managed care organizations charged with administering health care for the poor and the new Charter Oak plan show a cost increase of 24 percent over last year, a boost legislative leaders feel is unjustified.

Also, the low number of providers onboard has them asking what is the rush.

“It seems they are doing it backwards,” said state Sen. Jonathan Harris, D-West Hartford, co-chairman of the Human Services Committee, of the state’s decision to move forward with Charter Oak with insufficient doctors and only two hospitals participating: the Hospital of Saint Raphael and St. Mary’s Hospital in Waterbury.

Charter Oak is a new health care plan for uninsured adults with premium costs of $75 to $250 a month, depending on income, and increasing deductibles, also tied to income.

A total of 24 people have been enrolled, with 208 determined to be eligible and the state projecting 8,000 enrollees within the year.

Aetna Better Health has signed up two internal medicine doctors in Windham County and 11 in New Haven County, with none signed up in Windham County for Americhoice and eight in New Haven County for both Husky, the state’s Medicaid plan for low-income residents, and Charter Oak.

The Community Health Network of Connecticut, which is the only insurer with a network covering Husky, has 256 internists in New Haven County and 10 in Windham County for Husky, with only four in New Haven County for Charter Oak and none in Windham County.

State Sen. Toni N. Harp, D-New Haven, said it is uncertain if the 26 hospitals covering Husky patients under CHNCT will continue to do so when both plans are fully in place by the end of November and the largest current insurer, Anthem, is out.

Harris compared it to putting up the frame of a house and moving the family in before the rest is finished. He added, while he feels there is a more reasonable way to go about introducing Charter Oak, his main concern is the effect of an inadequate network of providers on 339,000 residents, mainly children, who are now enrolled in Husky.

David Dearborn, spokesman for the state Department of Social Services, which runs the health programs, said the department also is concerned about the light networks, which will be more crucial as of Sept. 1 when hundreds of residents are expected to be enrolled in Charter Oak. He said the state is still developing financial hardship criteria to allow citizens now enrolled in other plans to switch to Charter Oak.

He wished the critics “would take a breath, step back for a while and just let us and the insurers do our jobs to make this program work.”

Harp, co-chairwoman of the Appropriations Committee, was harsher in her appraisal, calling the 24 percent increase “obscene,” particularly since an analysis by Mercer, a health consultant hired by the state, said a 13.1 percent increase would cover all programmatic changes, plus rate increases for doctors and hospitals.

“I think they have a lot of explaining to do. Nothing else goes up this much,” said Harp, who accused the Department of Social Services of burying surpluses for years.

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Copyright (c) 2008, New Haven Register, Conn.

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