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Tom Foley Fears Push Towards State Health Insurance; Nancy Wyman Says He's Wrong

Chion Wolf
/
WNPR
Tom Foley thinks the real goal of some people at Access Health CT is to create a state-based insurance plan.

Governor Dannel Malloy has made implementing the Affordable Care Act a priority, something not all governors across the nation have done. With the election just a few days away, we spoke with Republican Tom Foley to get his view on the nation's new health care law. 

The goal of the Affordable Care Act was to help more people get health insurance coverage, and to do so at a reasonable cost. It offers financial subsidies, but it also mandates that Americans get covered or face a penalty.

In the first year, over 280,000 people enrolled in new health insurance in Connecticut, and 73,000 of them got it from a private insurer. Of those, nearly 80 percent got a subsidy. The remaining 208,000 people got their insurance through Medicaid, the insurance program for the poor. These are all numbers Malloy boasts.

Foley, on the other hand, isn't impressed. "The governor's taking a lot of credit for having Access Health CT have a smooth introduction," he said. "But we had far fewer uninsured people in Connecticut than the nation does, and most of the people who signed up were just people who qualified for the first time for Medicaid under the new, more inclusive thresholds."

The act expanded the income limits for Medicaid, making more people with slightly higher incomes eligible. Not all states agreed to expand Medicaid this way, but Connecticut did. Foley said he wouldn't roll that back, but he did say this: he thinks the real goal of some people at Access Health CT is to create a state-based insurance plan.

"I do not support the goal, which I understand some people have who are involved with Access Health CT, of driving towards a single-source provider in Connecticut," Foley said. "I don't support that goal. If there aren't people trying to drive in that direction, that's fine, but if there are, I disagree with that as a goal."

Lt. Governor Nancy Wyman said Foley is wrong.

"We are not going towards a single payer," said Wyman, who chairs the Access Health CT board. Not only is the state not reducing the number of private insurance providers in the program, it's increasing them. Last year there were three; this year there are four.

"Mr. Foley really should practice and read something before he speaks about it," she said.  

Open enrollment starts November 15 and lasts three months.

Jeff Cohen started in newspapers in 2001 and joined Connecticut Public in 2010, where he worked as a reporter and fill-in host. In 2017, he was named news director. Then, in 2022, he became a senior enterprise reporter.

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