Leave Healthcare Reforms to the Best and Brightest

By: Senator Kevin Kelly

Over the past few months there has been a great deal of conversation surrounding the failures of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and how this has negatively impacted Connecticut residents. On its face Obamacare was created to provide individuals with affordable, accessible and quality health care. There is no question that the promise of Obamacare has failed and a new direction is needed to propel our country and our state forward.

I would caution career politicians from platforming on idealistic fixes to our current health care system before sitting down and talking to the insurance industry as a whole. After all we do have the best and the brightest in insurance right here in Hartford.

Over the last year insurance premiums both on and off the exchange rose by double digit percentages in Connecticut, significantly increasing the cost of care for families across the state. To that end, last year alone over 15,000 people in Connecticut who previously purchased insurance through the state’s health insurance exchange created by the ACA, left the exchange – with 44 percent of individuals explaining that their plan was simply unaffordable.

I would like to commend the efforts of the Lieutenant Governor, Nancy Wyman, for the creation of a bipartisan health care task force to address these problems. She recognized the importance of sitting down with experts in the field to brainstorm ways in which to address the unaffordability of health care and what we can do as a state to fix these challenges.

At the end of the day we need an insurance solution rather than thinking politicians have the answer to every problem. After all it was President Lyndon B. Johnson who said, “There are no problems we cannot solve together, and very few that we can solve by ourselves.”