Blanchard on Healthcare - Four Things Dr. Bradley Could Have Checked

In response to Dr. Keith Bradley's post, I would note here that the Healthcare industry would not be in the fix it's currently in, if not for ObamaCare's takeover of the industry- an act universally supported by Democrats in 2010. The Doctor asked us to compare and contrast. He does not appear to have done the reading.

"His opponent has silence." Amybeth Laroche announced her campaign in February with seven stated priorities. Two of them were lower health care costs and housing solutions rooted in local control. The Newtown Bee printed the list on February 13. Westfair Online printed it on February 9. Neither took effort to find. He introduced himself as a physician. Physicians check the chart before writing the note.

Plank one: multiple employer welfare arrangements. That is a Republican Bill. Tony Hwang, the Republican whose seat is open, championed it as ranking member of the Insurance Committee. It has carried bipartisan committee support four years running and been stopped by Democratic leadership every single time. This spring it was House Bill 5378. Governor Lamont said he supported it. Democrats on the Appropriations Committee killed it in April.

Blanchard was not a bystander to this. He spent two years as chief of staff to Comptroller Sean Scanlon, who since 2019 has been the state's leading architect of the competing approach, first the public option and now the Connecticut Option, which he is still developing today. The impasse over small business health insurance is not some mystery of Hartford. It is a fight between two Democratic camps, and Blanchard worked at the elbow of one of them. From there he went on to be Governor Lamont's campaign communications director.

So the plank he leads with is an idea his own party has blocked for four straight years, offered by a candidate who spent those years working for the side doing the blocking. Dr. Bradley calls this well-thought-out legislative agenda. It is closer to a confession.

Plank two: strengthen Connecticut's Prescription Drug Affordability Board. Connecticut does not have a Prescription Drug Affordability Board. The General Assembly's own Office of Legislative Research listed the seven states that do in August 2024. We are not on it. Bills to create one died in 2023 and again in 2024, under a Democratic majority.

Plank three: limit hospital facility fees. Connecticut did that in 2015. And again in Public Act 23-171. And again effective July 2024. Connecticut Public reported this June that patients are still getting the bills, and the peer-reviewed research found the bans barely moved hospital margins. Three laws, one party, no result. The fourth promise is supposed to impress us.

Then Senate Bill 83. The money already existed. Legislators set aside $500 million in a November special session and roughly $330.8 million was still sitting unspent. SB 83 moved that balance into a new fund and extended the executive's authority to shift it between agencies. It was emergency-certified, meaning no committee vetting and no public hearing. The Democratic majority leader admitted on the floor that the original authority expired on purpose, because the legislature had been out of session, and the legislature was back in session. It passed 28 to 8 with three Republicans voting yes.

Objecting to a no-hearing expansion of unilateral spending power is not voting to starve veterans. Not one dollar of food, housing, or medical assistance depended on that vote. The appropriation was already law. Dr. Bradley knows the difference between an appropriation and a transfer authority, or he should have learned it before writing about it.

If this is the standard of evidence in the case for Rob Blanchard, the case for Rob Blanchard is in deep trouble.