HARTFORD, Conn. — On the day after their election victories, Connecticut Democrats said Wednesday that their next step will involve trying to make healthcare more affordable at a time of rising costs.

With the potential moniker of “Nedcare,” Gov. Ned Lamont said he continues to work behind the scenes with state Comptroller Sean Scanlon on an emerging plan that would be presented to the legislature for approval in the upcoming 2027 session.

“Next up: bend the curve on healthcare costs,” Lamont said during a post-election gathering of Democrats outside the state Capitol in Hartford. “Make healthcare affordable for every single one of our residents.”

Asked by The Courant about the timetable for his plan, Lamont said, “We’re looking at this right now. We’re looking at rates around the state and around the country. We’re in the middle of negotiations with state employees, including retirees and current state employees, to see if we can give them strong, positive incentives to be part of the network that is going to save them a lot of money and also save the taxpayers money. We include not-for-profits and small businesses and families to expand that pool, reducing healthcare costs for everybody.”

Some of the definitions are different between the national healthcare debate and Lamont’s in-the-works plan. Lamont calls his plan the “Connecticut option,” which is different from the public option at the national level. He is also calling for universal coverage, which can be interpreted at the national level as meaning a single-payer or Medicare-for-all system.

Scanlon, a policy wonk who has been tasked by Lamont to drill down on complex issues, is helping guide the research into the new plan.

“What the governor is talking about is that when he says universal and when we talk about universal, we mean different programs. Not just one program,” Scanlon told reporters. “Whether you want to call that Nedcare, which is the broad swath of policies that he has put in place so that when Donald Trump kicks 100,000 people off Medicaid, he has stepped up to help those people. When in January, they stopped the subsidies that helped over 100,000 people get insurance, he stepped up to help them. So it’s a broad sweep of policies and ideas that all come together. When you do that, plus the Connecticut option that he is talking about, that we hope to pass next year, you get closer to that universal healthcare reality.”

State employees, Lamont said, would not be forced into the new system.

“Look, they can keep exactly what they’ve got or we’re going to give them strong incentives to have a better deal as well,” Lamont said. “A better deal where they’ll be able to get healthcare at less cost. Maybe you can get a bonus to be able to do that — be part of a bigger pool that allows us to negotiate better rates for everybody.”

At the national and state level, politicians have been trying to improve healthcare for decades as they grapple with a highly complex subject that involves primary care, surgeries, prescription drugs, ambulance costs, and insurance premiums, among others.

Spearheaded by Scanlon and the governor’s budget office, the work continues on the plan with the goal of getting the Democratic-controlled legislature to approve the proposal by the time the regular session ends in early June 2027.

Patients could be directed to the UConn Health center’s John Dempsey Hospital in Farmington as a way to save money.

“Perhaps UConn Health will be an anchor tenant, and we’ll build from there,” Lamont said earlier.

Healthcare coverage remains a struggle for many Americans as the Trump administration announced in mid-September that more than 750,000 people had been removed from the insurance marketplaces of the Affordable Care Act. The administration charged that some recipients were not real people and others had received subsidies without being qualified for them.

During the hard-fought election campaign, Republican challenger Ryan Fazio of Greenwich told The Courant that Lamont had made little progress on healthcare.

“The governor has been in charge of the state for eight years, and his own insurance department has approved rate increases of 17% and 11% in the last two years in individual health insurance premiums,” Fazio said. “This man will not take responsibility for his own record of unaffordability in this state. I do have a plan that will increase choice in health insurance and increase competition in the healthcare space and reduce costs.”

Fazio added, “The governor has refused to support it. So real reform that is bipartisan has been left on the shelf amidst rising healthcare costs because of the governor’s unwillingness and failure of leadership, and that’s what matters to Connecticut residents – results. … He has done a horrible job on affordability as it pertains to healthcare, among other things. That is not my conjecture. Those are the facts. The Kaiser Foundation saying that Connecticut’s health insurance premiums are 40% more than the national average is a fact. He has failed to deliver affordability.”

Helping small businesses

Lamont has already taken a step forward on a narrow slice of a much broader problem in a healthcare system that costs more than $5 trillion nationally and also impacts hospitals, Medicare and Medicaid.

As a former cable television entrepreneur who ran a company that bore his name, Lamont is focused on helping small businesses with 50 or fewer employees through a new state tax credit of $1,000 per employee per year. That represents a maximum of $50,000 as an incentive for small businesses to provide health insurance, which would help in recruiting new employees. The arrangement is made through Access Health CT, which is the state’s insurance marketplace.

The tax credit was approved by the legislature as part of the two-year state budget in a huge document known as Senate Bill 1. The measure passed by 30-6 in the state Senate as the 11-member Republican caucus was split with six against and five in favor.

“I want healthcare to be affordable for absolutely everyone,” Lamont said.

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