Connecticut Comptroller Sean Scanlon said this week that the state’s Partnership Plan remains fiscally sound even after his office reported that the program paid out almost $23 million more in claims than it collected in member premiums in the 2024-25 fiscal year.
In a report released by Scanlon’s office, the plan paid out nearly $731.4 million in claims for the fiscal year that wrapped last June 30, about $22.6 million more than the premiums it collected from roughly 60,000 public-sector workers and their family members that it serves.
Scanlon, a Guilford Democrat, said the results reflect economic pressures affecting health plans across the United States. “The partnership plan, like every other health plan in the United States of America, had a tough time last year,” he said, pointing to surging hospital service fees and medical inflation.
Scanlon also disputed that the numbers should be treated as a warning sign for what comes next. He said, “I don’t view that (2025 performance) as a harbinger of impending doom and crisis,” and added: “I view that as what’s happening to everybody is happening to us.”
Republican lawmakers reacted sharply to the report, arguing that the Partnership Plan’s deficit shows the limits of current funding arrangements for public-sector coverage. Sen. Tony Hwang of Fairfield and Senate Minority Leader Stephen Harding of Brookfield said in a joint statement that the data was “a precursor to universal, single-payer health care in Connecticut.”
Hwang and Harding also pointed to steps taken by state officials in earlier years to maintain the program’s balance. They said officials transferred nearly $40 million from a federal COVID-relief grant into the partnership five years ago, and they raised questions about whether the state would be forced to keep propping up the program instead of relying on the private insurance industry.
The Partnership Plan was created by the legislature in 2015 to give municipal and other non-state public-sector workers another option for health coverage besides plans offered by their municipality or regional governmental entity. Of Connecticut’s 169 cities and towns, 109 have at least a portion of their workers covered through the partnership, and the comptroller’s office administers the program while contracting with private companies to manage benefits.
Scanlon’s report also pointed to earlier financial strains, including that in the first two fiscal years of operation the plan paid out $31 million more for claims than it received in premiums. The legislature later changed premium calculations, a shift Scanlon said contributed to higher fees for many enrollees after members’ premiums were adjusted in 2019.
Scanlon said that after lawmakers reformed the premium-setting process, premium collections exceeded claim payments in four of the last six years. He also said that over longer periods of time, most plans finish periodically in the red, while he described steps his office is taking to reduce costs.
He said his office is “working always to find ways to save,” including trying to negotiate savings each year by steering participants to generic prescription drugs when possible, and added that the program and private insurance plans both face pressure from rising hospital and other medical costs.
The American Hospital Association was cited in the coverage for explaining that hospitals have been under pressure to raise wages since the early years of the coronavirus outbreak in 2020 and 2021, while federal Medicaid and Medicare payments failed to keep pace with medical inflation. The same citation also noted that since the pandemic, patients have been coming to facilities in greater numbers and with more complex health problems.