Vetoes & Vacations: The Future of Health Reform in CTBack to the Blog »
July 9th, 2009
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What’s more important to you: a veto or vacation? State legislators may soon have to decide.
Governor Rell’s veto yesterday of the Healthcare Pooling and Sustinet bills comes as no surprise. Citing the cost ($69 million for pooling, $1 billion for Sustinet), the ongoing and growing state budget deficits and the movement for reform on a federal level, the Governor has a fair amount of political cover to protect herself with here.
Here’s a brief excerpt from her veto message:
“These are well-intentioned bills that seek to address critically important issues, but they ultimately fail to resolve the central problems of access and affordability,” Governor Rell said. “These bills also raise serious fiscal concerns that – in a time of record budget deficits, record unemployment and record business closures – simply cannot be ignored. These two bills would cost billions of dollars before any economic recovery is complete.
“At the same time, there are daily developments in Washington that have the potential to make extraordinary and fundamental changes in the way health care coverage is provided in our nation,” the Governor said. “Because – like the proponents of these bills – I believe these issues must be worked out for the benefit of all our residents, I am creating a broad-based panel to develop policies ensuring Connecticut is ready to make the most of the developments at the federal level.”
Potential override sessions are being planned for later this month, and the potential for an override on both appears to be about 50/50. In the House, it will be automatic, with a 3 to 1 vote margin on both bills and the muscle of Speaker Donovan behind them, a 2/3rds majority is virtually guaranteed.
In the Senate the outcome is very much up in the air. With margins of 23 to 12 on Sustinet (1 absence) and 21 to 12 on Pooling, (3 absences), who shows up for the vote will determine the outcome.
I’ll review more details about our position on this in a later post, but suffice it to say that I feel very, very strongly that these state-run plans are a horrible idea for our staet, our economy and the quality of healthcare in CT.
So for now, please contact your state Senator (find your State Senator here) and ask him/her to please help sustain these vetoes.
Posted by Bill in Healthcare Reform
I agree that both Sustinet and the Donovan plan will be deterimental to ultimately the taxpayers of CT.
I think the big unknown is who will be the better horsetrader. Rell, with her ability to affect benefits to a particular Senators district or Donovan, who can offer political power (e.g. appointments/committees).