The folks, or at least one contributor to, Firedoglake think very highly of the recently announced Sustinet Board’s Draft Report:
Both the new health care bill and other federal laws like ERISA make it very hard to for states to adopt my preferred solution of single-payer health care, or even my secondary choices, like a robust national public option or a comprehensive, extremely regulated all-payer system of only non-profit mutual insurers.
Assume the state can’t get waivers from the new federal laws until 2017, and this unfortunately restricts this relatively progressive proposal. I highly commend their recommendations to limit the worthless private exchanges by using the basic health plan for people making less than 200% FPL. I’m also glad they suggest a basic design that should produce a viable public alternative to private insurance for everyone in the state. Although I would prefer SustiNet to be a fully governmental agency instead of a quasi-governmental one.
In a few days, Vermont’s health care advisory board is expected to present three proposals for reforming their health care system, which I will be looking at very closely. So far, though, this is the best proposal to deal implementing the new health care law I have seen in any state. While not prefect, if Connecticut and other states adopt this model, it will be a good step at the state level toward making decent reform out of what was frankly a pretty bad new federal law.
Betsy Ritter, State Representative from Waterford and Montville, and, more importantly, one of the co-founders of SE Connecticut Drinking Liberally, was instrumental in creating Sustinet. If the legislature and Governor Malloy can now follow through, Connecticut might lead the way in showing the rest of the country how to do health care right, or at least, how to do it right given that the best ways to do it have been declared off the table.
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