The Public Option In Connecticut

Someone needs to hurry up and ask that Conserva Dem/Independent Joe LIEberman why the rest of America shouldn't be privy to a public option in health care when his home state will soon have it.

Connecticut is headed toward universal health care whether the state’s business community likes it or not.

The Democratic-controlled General Assembly overrode seven of Republican Gov. M. Jodi Rell’s 20 vetoes last week, including one that lays groundwork for a universal health care system in the state.

The plan, known as Sustinet, creates a new public authority that is charged with developing a self-insured health care plan by 2012 to cover the state’s uninsured. It will also have to come up with ways to slow the escalating costs of health care and increase the number of insurance options available to individuals and employers.

Sustinet stirred heated debate in the state legislature this year and split the support of the Connecticut’s business community.

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But local West Hartford businessman Kevin Galvin, who owns Connecticut Commercial Maintenance Inc., organized a group of 19,000 small business owners who supported the Sustinet plan.

Galvin has said that small businesses have never had a voice in the health care debate and are at a major disadvantage in gaining affordable health care because they don’t have enough employees to spread their risk.

Now admittedly this isn't the most laudatory account of the health care bill. But its striking that the small business community, the very people Republicans and ConservaDems say will be hurt by universal healthcare, are the ones who rallied around the bill. Now might be a good time to ask Lieberman to explain his opposition again.