Connecticut Starts Charter Oak Health Plan

So, after staying out of the Rain for a few months, we've decided to take the plunge again, sans umbrella, and see what happens.

As many of you may know (hopefully everyone in CT), our illustrious Governor M. Jodi Rell recently enacted legislation establishing the Charter Oak Health Care Plan in Connecticut. Passed into law effective July 1st, it is intended to provide low-cost health care for people who are ineligible for other current state health insurance programs or who are not covered by an employer. Since we are both Realtors, and are obviously not covered by our "employer", this program would seem to suit us to a T. The premiums range from $75 to $259 based on income level, but applicants cannot have been covered by an other health plan for the six months prior to applying.

With the low premiums, reasonable co-pays and manageable deductibles, you would think there would be a veritable stampede of independent contractors, self-employed and low income folks all rushing to sign up for this program, but strangely that doesn't seem to be the case. State officials only expect about 19,000 of the state's approximately 325,000 uninsured (as of the 2006 census) to sign up for the plan, and as of 7/31 there have been only 24 people begin coverage under the plan, even though there were over 16,000 calls to the state hotline and 5,351 have applied. Another 200 applications are pending.

As I said above, this program seems to be tailor made for Realtors, or anyone else who is responsible for providing their own health insurance. When we saw the press release announcing the program, we immediately applied online and figured, heck, this is the bomb, we're a shoe-in to get coverage.

Not so fast.

A couple weeks after we applied, we received a letter in the mail stating we failed to select the plan we wanted when we initially applied. The letter said we could look at the enclosed brochure that explained the plans, pick the one we want, indicate same on the attached form and mail it back to them - except there was no brochure. We called the office that handles the applications, but got voicemail so we left a message that we needed a brochure and we'd appreciate it if aomeone could get back to us.

That was last week. We called again today and actually talked to a human, but it was one of those people I like to call Apologeticus Indifferentus. They were sorry they couldn't help, there was nothing they could do, but they would put a note in our file that we hadn't received the brochure and maybe someone would get back to us. Someday. Why not just fax us the brochure?? Surely you're not going to snail mail it??

Well, that remains to be seen. We still haven't heard from anyone so our application will, like so many others in state and federally run programs, be delayed indefinitely until some bureaucrat decides that it might be nice to get the application approval process going again, and maybe send us a brochure. And no, the brochure is NOT online. Go figure.

And, to make matters worse, the state seems to have put the cart in front of the horse and started the program without actually getting hospitals and health care providers on board to service the applicants. Smooth move. There is currently only one hospital that has signed up for the program, New Haven's The Hospital of St. Raphael. In addition, there are only three insurance providers that will offer coverage plans: Aetna Better Health, AmeriChoice of Connecticut, and Community Health Network of Connecticut. Finally, only 3,000 primary caregivers are signed up for the program, citing low reimbursement rates as the primary reason for their slowness in signing on.

Anyway, it still remains to be seen if this program will be a viable alternative for affordable health care and if it can be sustained. It also remains to be seen if our application will ever be approved and allow us to take advantage of its promised coverage. We'll just have to play Wait-N-See, and we'll keep you updated. If any other Connecticut Realtors have applied for this plan, please feel free to comment and let us know if you've been approved or denied, or just let us know what you think of the Governor's idea.

UPDATE: We finally heard from Charter Oak, who said the letter we got was wrong, there is NO brochure. So, we have to go online to research the available plans ourselves, which Pat is now doing. Also, we have no idea if Midstate Medical Center is going to participate in the plan, nor our primary caregivers with ProHealth Physicians Group. Midstate Medical said to call back in a week to see if they've made up their mind, and we're still waiting for a callback from our doctors. This really stinks.

UPDATE #2: St. Mary's Hospital of Waterbury is the second hospital to sign up under the Charter Oak Health Plan. We still have not heard from MidState Medical or our personal health care providers as to whether or not they will participate. MidState Medical's only comment was, "we haven't decided yet", and our doctor's office simply hasn't called us back, despite repeated messages left with them. How's that for service?

UPDATE #3: Well, after all this time it turns out that our doctors are leaning towards NOT signing up for Charter Oak, which would defeat the purpose of our signing up for the program in the first place. So, we have reapplied to Aetna (not through Charter Oak) for the same coverage we had before we went to Charter Oak. The bad news? It's taking FOREVER for them to "review" our application and approve it, even though they already approved it just a few weeks ago. Amazing what red tape you have to wade through to get health care. It boggles the mind. Anyway, according to Governor Rell, there may not be enough money in the budget to run Charter Oak as it should be. That should make everyone that signs up for it happy...stay tuned, if we have any more updates, we'll post them here.