Connecticut health officials and lawmakers on Thursday expressed concerns about the Trump administration’s new health care policy framework — especially a plan to fund consumers’ health savings accounts — but some praised the transparency measures and proposed regulation of insurance companies.

President Donald Trump announced outlines of a health care plan he wants Congress to take up as Republicans have faced increasing pressure to address rising health costs after lawmakers let subsidies expire.

The cornerstone is his proposal to send money directly to Americans for health savings accounts so they can handle insurance and health costs as they see fit. Democrats have rejected the idea as a paltry substitute for the tax credits that had helped lower monthly premiums for many people.

The plan also focuses on lowering drug prices and requiring insurers to be more upfront with the public about costs, revenues, rejected claims and wait times for care.

“Health Savings Account-based proposals do not meaningfully reform health care delivery and continue to rely on high-deductible health plans, which are a barrier to patient access, and not a solution to lower health care costs,” said Dr. Mariam Hakim-Zargar, president of the Connecticut State Medical Society.

But the organization supports provisions that boost transparency and place more scrutiny on insurers.

“The Connecticut State Medical Society welcomes reforms that rein in pharmacy benefit managers and require meaningful transparency and regulation of large health insurance companies, including how often care is denied, where premium dollars actually go, and the astronomical profits health insurers generate at the expense of patients,” Hakim-Zargar added.

Sen. Saud Anwar, a South Windsor Democrat who is co-chair of the Public Health Committee, said the plan is “like putting a Band-Aid on a bullet hole.”

“After the Trump administration went out of its way to harm American health care in 2025, this is a pitiful response — it treats high health care costs as a shell game and lacks many details as to how some of these ideas will even be implemented,” he said.

The White House did not offer details about how much money it envisioned being sent to consumers to shop for insurance, or whether the money would be available to all “Obamacare” enrollees or just those with lower-tier bronze and catastrophic plans.

The idea mirrors one floated among Republican senators last year. Democrats largely rejected it, saying the accounts would not be enough to cover costs for most consumers. Currently, such accounts are used disproportionately by the wealthiest Americans, who have more income to fund them and a bigger incentive to lower their tax rate.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt was asked at her briefing Thursday whether the president could guarantee that, under his plan, people would be able to cover their health costs. She did not directly answer, but said, “If this plan is put in place, every single American who has health care in the United States will see lower costs as a result.”

Enhanced tax credits that helped reduce the cost of insurance for the vast majority of Affordable Care Act enrollees expired at the end of 2025 even though Democrats had forced a 43-day government shutdown over the issue.

Sen. Bernie Moreno, R-Ohio, has been leading a bipartisan group of 12 senators trying to devise a compromise that would extend those subsidies for two years while adding new limits on who can receive them. That proposal would create the option, in the second year, of a health savings account that Trump and Republicans prefer.

The White House official denied that Trump was closing the door completely on those bipartisan negotiations and said the White House preferred to send money directly to consumers.

A spokesman for Gov. Ned Lamont said Trump and senators should prioritize the federal subsidies.

“If President Trump is serious about actually making health care affordable for countless Americans who desperately need it, he’ll urge the Senate to pass, without any further delay, the three-year clean extension of the ACA enhanced premium tax credits,” the spokesman, Rob Blanchard, said. “This measure already passed the House on a strong, bipartisan vote last week, and if everyone cares as much about affordability as they say, the Senate should finish the job and deliver affordable health care.”

Trump proposal sows confusion

Health care advocates and legislators said the plan sparked confusion and lacked detail.

“We all want lower health care and drug prices, along with increased transparency in the industry. This proposal is not so much a plan but an outline lacking critical details,” said Rep. Cristin McCarthy Vahey, D-Fairfield, co-chair of the Public Health Committee. “It’s not clear how it will result in expanded access, improved outcomes, and reduced inequities — priorities of ours here in Connecticut.”

“If the intent is to allow people to use the money to buy insurance from exchange plans, it seems extremely inefficient and disadvantageous from an administrative standpoint to ‘bypass government,’ set up new HSA accounts, fund them, and have consumers pay exchanges or other insurers, when the system that’s currently set up to provide tax credits is already in place and keeps costs lower for everyone who has health insurance,” said Kathleen Holt, the state health care advocate.

“This does not appear to be a plan or even reasonable framework for a plan.”

Trump has long been dogged by his lack of a comprehensive health care plan as he and Republicans have sought to unwind former President Barack Obama’s signature legislation, the Affordable Care Act. Trump was thwarted during his first term in trying to repeal and replace the law.

When he ran for president in 2024, Trump said he had only “concepts of a plan” to address health care. His new proposal, short on many specifics, appeared to be the concepts of a plan.

“To date, we have not seen a detailed health care plan that we can appropriately evaluate and provide any substantive comment on,” Dr. Manisha Juthani, Connecticut’s public health commissioner, said Thursday. “We welcome any proposal from the administration that addresses the soaring cost of health care and reduces the financial burden on individuals while ensuring that cost is no longer a barrier to the care people need.”

Ayesha Clarke, executive director of Health Equity Solutions, called the plan “a wolf in sheep’s clothing.”

“It is framed as affordability reforms but, in practice, will drive premiums higher, reduce access to care, and increase rates of uninsurance and uncompensated care,” she said Thursday. “Funding cost-sharing reductions and adding a layer to subsidy distribution would shift costs and more burden of navigating overly complicated insurance plans to individuals. Systemic racism has for too long excluded Black and brown communities from employer-sponsored coverage. Thus, this plan will deepen the harm of this population.”

It was not immediately clear if any lawmakers in Congress were working to introduce the Republican president’s plan. A White House official who was not authorized to speak publicly and described some details on condition of anonymity said the administration had been discussing the proposal with allies in Congress but was unable to name any lawmakers who were working to address it.

Trump’s plan comes months after the Republicans’ big tax and spending bill last year cut more than $1 trillion over a decade in federal health care and food assistance, largely by imposing work requirements on those receiving aid and shifting certain federal costs to the states.

Democrats have blasted those cuts as devastating for vulnerable people who rely on programs such as Medicaid for their health care. The GOP bill included an infusion of $50 billion over five years for rural health programs, an amount experts have said is inadequate to fill the gap in funding.