Survey Questions and Candidate Responses

Cynthia Mangini | Participating Election

Perhaps legislation overseeing these consolidations could deter some of the loss of services

Kara Rochelle | Participating Election

The state must scrutinize these consolidations further and reject them when they will result in negative health outcomes for regions of the state. The wellbeing of our residents must come first, and the state should consider financial incentives, disincentives, and further regulation to ensure that access to healthcare does not suffer.

Nick Gauthier | Participating Election

Create a system of public, not-for-profit, universal health care and implement heavy regulation against monopolistic practices. https://www.nickgauthier.com/issues#Healthcare

Tammy Nuccio | Participating Election

This is a very complex question and is really two different things. One - the loss of small community hospitals is devastating to our towns and should not be allowed to happen. The buying up of these community hospitals to then immediately - or shortly after - close down maternity, then OP procedures, then IP stays etc is decreasing accessibility to our more rural residents. These services are vital to communities and cannot be allowed to happen. And two - the consolidation itself. When a large hospital provider buys a small community hospital they have to submit a Certificate of Need (CON) and they have to provide rationale on why this consolidation is a good thing. The state is supposed to review those CON's several years after the purchase to ensure the hospital is doing what it intended, to my knowledge, we have not reviewed the CON's for several of the latest mergers. We need the Attorney Generals office and the Office of Healthcare Strategy to do the reviews and determine if the hospital has met its obligation. If we've seen a reduction of service or accessibility the CON needs to be reversed and reparations need to happen. The all claims payer database has shown we are seeing fewer instances of care with higher cost of those incidents from our larger hospital providers, that is not increased accessibility or affordability, it's the exact opposite and we need to do a better job of monitoring and not allowing profitability over people. There also needs to be powers put in place that enable insurance companies to push back on network contracting to better contain the cost of these large providers. The cost of care provided is the largest portion of healthcare costs, as hospital networks expand they have more power to insist on increases that exceed the consumer price index.

Jonathan Steinberg | Participating Election

As Chair of the Public Health Committee, this is an issue I've considered for some time. The State needs to be careful about interfering in the healthcare marketplace, but we have an obligation to assure healthcare access, quality and reasonable costs -- all at risk if consolidation goes too far. Small hospitals are often critical resources in the communities they serve, but struggle to perform enough tertiary care to maintain quality standards. In the past, I've focused on dialogue with all the players, but I recognize that voluntary measures many no longer be sufficient. What precisely the State's role ought to be is not yet clear, but will be a subject for debate this session.

Anne Hughes | Participating Election

Strengthen licensing standards of hospitals, mandate tax-exempt hospitals provide essential community services like Labor and Delivery, pull federal dollars for funding/investment for more and expand FQHC's to provide annex services like L/D, and funding provide specialty care clinics like dental surgery/ treatment, diabetes treatment; deny CON's for consolidation, deny vertical equity investment in healthcare monopolies.

Lisa Thomas | Participating Election

This question is particularly important to the 35th senate district where we have lost essential care - including labor and delivery, as well as ICU - at 3 community hospitals that serve us. All three have been bought up by large healthcare corporations. This has created a healthcare desert that is unsafe for individuals and families. As Chairwoman of the Coventry Town Council, I authored our testimony submitted to the Certificate of Need (CON) hearing on the closing of services at Windham Community Hospital. Our coalition worked tirelessly to hold them accountable and we won. However, the CON process is not strong enough and the corporations are appealing fines levied on them for violating that process. The legislature must tighten up the CON requirements - which is being looked at by the committee our coalition got the legislature to create. Beyond all this, we must bring healthcare professionals, advocacy groups, and community members together to problem solve ways to deliver services in communities in an efficient and economical sound manner.

John Rasimas | Participating Election

As with many public service industries, the allowability of consolidation has to be examined on a case-by-case basis to ensure that free-market competition is maintained.

Edwin Vargas | Participating Election

We must increase our support to the smaller hospitals and discourage healthcare monopolies. I also believe that we should increase our public options.

MD Masudur Rahman | Participating Election

The pandemic showed us all how critical our healthcare system is, and that we all rely on it functioning well. We cannot allow loss of services or even entire hospitals to happen, especially in rural areas where even the closest alternative care may be too far. We should incentivize our students going into the medical field to remain in Connecticut, and work to attract practitioners from all over to our state. While I am wary of excessive consolidation, I am very enthusiastic about the Yale New Haven Hospital purchase of Manchester Memorial and ECHN.

David Michel | Participating Election

More state support is crucial for those rural areas and we can help maintain the quality of care.

Christine Palm | Participating Election

This is part of the much broader question of the abject failure of our healthcare system in general. The privatization of hospitals -- especially those owned by the Catholic Church industry -- cannot serve the public's interest. Maternity wards are a prime example.

Julie Kushner | Participating Election

Consolidation in the healthcare industry creates a danger of reduced competition and, in the case of rural areas, can lead to the loss of vital services to communities altogether. To prevent this, we need to promote both competition and regulation. This includes empowering the State Attorney General to do effective antitrust enforcement and promoting price transparency with comprehensive claims databases and regular insurance and provider rate reviews. We should also explore the creation of a public option healthcare plan to compete in provider markets and help guarantee low costs for residents.

Robert Hotaling | Participating Election

Consolidation is a fact of any industry. Complying with state regulations, medical insurance and other regulatory factors make it difficult for smaller organizations to continue to exist. The solution to excessive consolidation is improving the environment for competition where smaller hospitals and medical centers need to continue to exist so they provide services to their immediate area. We need to make it easier to treat medical issues at the local, simpler level rather than starting at a larger hospital. We would look forward to sitting down with larger organizations like Yale Medical and Hartford Medical to review their plans and take a more active role in a partnership to preserve the importance of local healthcare access. To address loss of services, we would expand the 32 community health centers and school based health services, and offer more urgent care centers. Large hospitals need a lot of capital and provide a lot of specialization that needs a large population to achieve medical competence. We believe rural areas need more primary care and secondary care availability so that only the most difficult advanced cases would be transferred to a nearby city hospital.

Kimberly Becker | Participating Election

We need vigorous enforcement of the antitrust and unfair competition laws with respect to healthcare consolidation. We have extremely high cost healthcare, which hurts families, retirees, and all residents. In the past, we have allowed Hartford Healthcare and Yale New Haven Health to dominate all aspects of healthcare in Connecticut. The loss of access to local healthcare facilities is of particular concern in my district. I will encourage the development of small, independent clinics and healthcare centers in rural areas that can provide some needed competition and I oppose any further consolidation. We need more than one or two giant hospital systems in Connecticut.

Jillian Gilchrest | Participating Election

I am working with some of my colleagues to address this problematic issue, in particular as it relates to women's reproductive healthcare. We are looking at licensing of hospitals and the CON process, among others, as possible solutions.

Frank Smith | Participating Election

I will continue to seek more community input from Milford and throughout the state on this important issue of healthcare delivery.

Bob Godfrey | Participating Election

Perhaps we need the equivalent of anti-trust laws for health care. I hate the very idea of turning health care into a commodity, and so do my constituents (one of which called a local hospital a 'meat factory' after some unhappy experiences). Health care needs to be about healing, not money.