Bills that would have imposed a $50 million assessment on the state’s health insurers appear to have stalled out for good, with lawmakers taking no action on the two proposals before the adjournment of the 2021 legislative session late Wednesday night.
An online compendium of bills passed by the legislature since it convened in January shows that neither SB 842 nor HB 6447 — the latter of which was Gov. Ned Lamont’s health care proposal — made it across the finish line at the Capitol this year, as elected officials shifted their attention toward other matters, including Connecticut’s biennial budget and marijuana legalization.
State Democrats had presented the assessment as a means to fund an expansion of healthcare coverage for low-income residents, but the dual proposals ran headlong into opposition from Connecticut’s business community, which dubbed the $50 million charge the “health insurance tax” or “HIT” and argued it would inevitably be passed on to customers and harm small businesses.
On Wednesday, the Stop The HIT Coalition — a collection of business groups including the Connecticut Business & Industry Association — released a statement applauding Lamont and lawmakers for leaving the assessment out of the state’s spending plans.
“Our policymakers at the state Capitol made the right decision by not moving forward with a HIT that only would have made health insurance less affordable for local businesses and their workers and potentially jeopardized the coverage they need today,” said CBIA President and CEO Chris DiPentima. “Without having to worry about a HIT, now local business owners can focus on reopening to full capacity, providing the services their customers desire and keeping their employees enrolled in health benefits.”
The Stop The HIT Coalition, which has protested SB 842 and HB 6447 for months, maintains that the assessments could have increased costs by $480 annually for the average working family in Connecticut. The group also pointed to an added burden on businesses, which might have been less likely to hire new workers or expand employee benefits if they were struggling to keep up with higher health insurance payments.
Democrats who supported the assessment had argued that health insurers would have still come out ahead under their plan, since a federal health insurance tax — which extracted six times the amount that SB 842 and HB 6447 proposed to collect — was allowed to expire.
