Budget Process
2019 Connecticut legislative session – what happened and what didn’t happen
Download the full report Connecticut’s General Assembly debated an unusually large number of health-related proposals this year. Some were new and some have been debated for years. Some passed, some were rejected, and some are on hold for next year. As of this writing, only the minimum wage increase bill has been signed into law…
Read MoreState budget deal restores coverage for 4,000 HUSKY parents, a move toward quality-based payments, and insurance protections
Policymakers have reached a $43 billion state budget deal to cover the next two fiscal years, on-time before the end of the session. For health policy folks, there is a lot to like in the deal but a few notes of caution. The best part is a partial restoration of HUSKY parents’ eligibility cuts from…
Read MorePublic option gone but good pieces remain
Negotiations over a public health insurance option in CT have broken down but other good parts of the deal remain. Reportedly, there is a budget agreement to restore HUSKY eligibility for some of the 11,000 working parents cut in 2016. DSS reports found that the large majority of the low-income parents cut from HUSKY were…
Read MoreAppropriations Committee passes their budget proposal — Still mixed news, but better
Tuesday, the Appropriations Committee passed their version of the 2019-2021 state budget on a party line vote. While they mainly agreed with the Governor’s proposal from February, they did improve in some areas. Good and better news – The committee agreed with the Governor not to cut eligibility for HUSKY parents or the Medicare Savings…
Read MoreGovernor’s first budget proposal has plenty of good news, with a bit of wait-and-see news, and a bit of bad news
The Lamont administration released their first budget today. In healthcare, it is mostly good news, but also some we’ll wait-and-see, and a bit of bad news. The good news: There are no cuts to HUSKY parents eligibility, no cuts to Medicaid Savings Program (mostly), and no plans to return to private insurers managed care. Let’s…
Read MoreCT Medicaid’s managed fee-for-service model saved $300 million last year
Updated 2/19/2019 We got very good news on Medicaid spending, again, at last week’s MAPOC meeting. Per member costs were down 2% from 2016 to last year, even despite hospital rate increases, saving taxpayers $300 million. The state’s share of Medicaid has barely budged since 2014, despite huge enrollment increases. CT remains behind other states…
Read MoreCTNJ policy series starts Jan. 16 with state budget
CT News Junkie is launching Let’s Talk, a new policy forum series, to explore complex challenges facing Connecticut. The series starts Wednesday, January 16th at 10am with The Squeeze is On: The Next State Budget. Revenue isn’t keeping up with past promises and tough challenges across issues will be hard to fix without resources. Panelists…
Read MoreCTNJ: Analysis – Clinic plan could hit state budget, raise patient costs, increase barriers to access
Last week the state Office of Health Strategy held a public hearing on a plan to transfer 28,500 mostly Medicaid patients, now served by three Yale-New Haven (YNHH) neighborhood primary care clinics, to a new site on Long Wharf owned by YNHH. But in a twist that could cost the state millions, those patients will…
Read MorePublic hearing on controversial YNHH primary care plan this week
The state Office of Health Strategy (formerly OHCA) will be holding a CON public hearing next Wednesday November 28th at 3pm at the Parish House at Betsy Ross Arts Magnet School, 150 Kimberly Ave., New Haven, CT 06519. Yale-New Haven Hospital, together with New Haven’s two community health centers, Fairhaven and Cornell Scott Hill Health…
Read More31 ways to save on healthcare in Connecticut’s budget
Connecticut’s state budget is facing future deficits and health spending is a large share of the budget. The state now spends $3.8 billion between Medicaid and the state employee health plan to cover about a million state residents. Health care spending outside the state budget is also growing. Connecticut has the sixth highest per capita…
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