Rep. Kerry Wood (D-Rocky Hill), co-chair of the Insurance Committee, joins NBC Connecticut’s Mike Hydeck with her plans to address rising healthcare costs when the new session starts in January.
Mike Hydeck: Right here in Connecticut, right now, we’re dealing with soaring inflation, the threat of a possible recession and chances are, if your health insurance premiums haven’t gone up yet, they will very soon. The state signed off on a double digit increase earlier this year. Lawmakers say, though, with a new session comes work on a new solution, possibly. Representative Kerry Wood joins me now. The Rocky Hill Democrat is the co-chair of the Insurance Committee. Representative Wood, welcome to Face the Facts.
Kerry Wood: Hi, thank you for having me.
Mike Hydeck: So the healthcare industry is notoriously opaque. The cost of treatment can vary widely from hospital to hospital, which in turn affects what we pay for healthcare. What are some of the goals lawmakers have as we head into the new session when it comes to making health care more affordable?
Kerry Wood: Well, the good news, this past session of 2022, which ended in May of this year, we did pass something called a healthcare benchmark. And for the first time in our state’s history, we’ll be collecting information on costs across our health care system and our pharmaceutical costs. That’s really important. It kind of sounds like ‘hey, why weren’t we doing that, you know, before?’ But we did put that in place so that we can gauge where we are spending and that data will give us some direction of where we can do better. For example, if we’re spending a ton of money in stage four cancer, that means we’re not detecting cancer early. And we should be putting more money into primary care and early detection. So this is a great bill that we passed and that data will be coming towards us for this upcoming session to help us drive where we are going to be focused on our legislation. Additionally, we need to provide more options within our healthcare insurance plan. You recently heard that we’ve had some small group carriers ConnectiCare, in particular, leave the small group market. And this is really for our small businesses. We need more competition in that space. And I’ll be putting forward a bill that I put forward in previous years that wasn’t successful. But hopefully it will gain traction this year called Association Health Plans and it allows small businesses to pool their…
Mike Hydeck: And hopefully it will be. So let me ask you a question. How much of a factor does having the insurance companies headquartered here in Connecticut affect decision making in Hartford? Not only are they a powerful citizen of Connecticut, they employ a lot of our friends and family and plenty of people, you know, I would imagine in your regular life are employed by one of these insurance companies. How does that affect the decisions you have to make?
Kerry Wood: It just means that we have some of the smartest and brightest minds at the table with us when dealing with health insurance issues. It also means that we’ve been able to do things like create a market for the captive insurers. That’s the bill that we did pass this past session as well. And it allows the captive insurance industry to domicile with tax benefits here in Connecticut. And as a result, we’ve exponentially grown that sector. And that’s growing because Connecticut is the insurance capital. And we have some of the best and brightest minds here, whether it’s actuaries and attorneys that specialize in that field. So I’d like to keep continue working with our industries, our biggest industry like insurance, and ask them how we can, you know, get them to grow and continue to hire here in the state.
Mike Hydeck: So let’s talk about the Healthcare Transparency Act. It was supposed to go into effect July 1, giving consumers more information. Obviously, the data the state is going to collect is going to play into that. Five hundred items, though, should have prices on them by now and then it’s gonna continue to graduate year in and year out on January 1. How and why is that not in full swing when this started on the federal level, do you think?
Kerry Wood: Such a great question. Pricing transparency is one of our biggest concerns on the Insurance and Real Estate Committee. We think it’s a way to give consumers more access to making decisions on where they’re going to spend their money. And these hospitals are supposed to be in compliance. And I think we need to talk at a legislative level of, if they’re not in compliance, what kind of recourse we have in order to make sure they are in compliance. Because I don’t know about you, but I really want to go to a system that has high quality care for the best, the best pricing that that I can buy. So I think it’s really important for consumers to have that information so that they can make those informed decisions when purchasing health care.
Mike Hydeck: You can go, whether it’s your doctor, whether it’s your insurance company, it’s all in secret language. Nobody knows what the codes are on the bill. Sometimes the insurance company and the doctor don’t agree on what code should cover, go for what service. Does that play in? And can that be changed, in your opinion?
Kerry Wood: Yeah, that’s actually coming into effect in by May of this year, that electronic filing and electronic data has to be given to the State of Connecticut so that when you go to a different health system, your files are all in an electronic form. I’m sure we can all remember going to the doctor at some point and having them pull out a file. It’s going to be a big change. But we’re going to move in that direction to make it easier for patients and their providers to provide, I think the end result is the best quality care. And that means having that data in an electronic format that is accessible across any system.
Mike Hydeck: And that anybody can read and interpret because code 0025 can mean an MRI at one place, and can be something else entirely somewhere else. It needs to be uniform. And that’s a challenging data situation. Can the state fund something like that?
Kerry Wood: The state doesn’t need to fund something like that right at this point, because we have a system in place where the compliance should be in by May of 2023. If it doesn’t, I’m sure that we’ll be asked to be coming to the table for some assistance, but I’m confident that the health providers and the insurance carriers can make sure that happens without the state having to step in.
Mike Hydeck: Okay, Representative Kerry Wood from Rocky Hill. Thanks so much for joining us on Face the Facts. We have to leave it there. We appreciate your time.
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