Connecticut Citizen Action Group
In April 2021, five health insurance companies sent Governor Ned Lamont a letter, threatening to move jobs out of Connecticut if the state passed a Public Option. The Public Option would have allowed small businesses, nonprofits, and many individuals to be part of the state’s Partnership Plan for health insurance, where they would benefit from the state's purchasing power to lower costs. Private insurance companies would still have had work administering the plan - but may have seen limits on their profits.
This report is the third in a series by the Connecticut Citizen Action Group (CCAG), examining how the excessive greed and shady
This report looks at overall profits, and how these companies have chosen to use these resources - further enriching executives and a small group of shareholders, at the expense of public health. Prior reports examined CEO compensation, which totaled $137.6 million, and lobbying, finding ethics breaches and $1.3 million spent in six months to defeat the Public Option. CCAG has dubbed these companies Connecticut’s Five Families to highlight their unethical behavior.
The entire series can be found here.
Four of these companies made more than $35 BILLION in profit in 2020. The entire budget of the state of Connecticut, for reference, is $46.4 billion. With those dollars, they could have taken many steps, including:
● Sending home testing kits, and Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) such as face masks, hand sanitizer and face shields, to people they cover.
● Providing education to enrollees, including providing Community Health Workers (CHWs) to boost vaccine participation, checking on the health of enrollees, and assisting people with meeting their healthcare needs, including the mental health needs of children enrolled in their plans.
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