Governor Maura Healey knows how to read a room.
During her speech at the Retailers Association of Massachusetts annual meeting, held at Bentley University in Waltham on Wednesday, Healey promised to shop local this holiday season. She also announced she had just signed a long-awaited $4 billion economic development bill that morning.
But you want to know what really got the crowd of small-business owners going? Health insurance reform.
Healey said she noticed the group’s disappointingly modest forecast, released that day, of an average 1.5-percent increase in year-over-year sales for the holiday shopping season. She noted that her new health insurance commissioner, former Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts lobbyist Michael Caljouw, wants to help curb the maddening increases in health insurance costs like the ones that RAM members keep seeing.
“I know one of the real concerns is the cost of health insurance,” Healey told the crowd. “I want to work with you all on actually doing something about that. Mike is going to be taking a hard look [at] what we need to do.”
Now that promise drew the most applause of anything she said.
It’s no wonder: RAM president Jon Hurst, who sat at the head table with Healey during the lunch meeting, had testified in March that his small-business members reported an average premium renewal increase of 7.5 percent this year, and a nearly 10 percent average annual increase over the past decade (roughly three times the inflation rate and the state’s benchmark for healthcare cost growth).
Caljouw and the state agency he leads, the Division of Insurance, will hold a series of virtual listening sessions over the next several weeks to examine the cost drivers behind health-premium increases in the state, and to discuss potential policy solutions. The goal, per a Healey administration spokesperson, is to come up with some policy options that lead to a “more affordable and stable health care system.” Unsurprisingly, Hurst already has plans to speak at two of those sessions.
Jon Chesto can be reached at jon.chesto@globe.com. Follow him @jonchesto.
