Study: States Can Learn From Vermont’s Health Care Reform

One of the country’s top medical journals is touting Vermont’s health care reform effort as an example for the rest of the nation. A study published this week in the New England Journal of Medicine says other states can learn some lessons from Vermont in rolling out health exchanges that are essential to the federal Affordable Care Act.
larson01.jpg

Vermont Releases Insurance Rates Under Obamacare

Vermont became the first state on Monday to publish the rates it would charge people who don’t currently have health insurance to get coverage – a key step toward establishing the health exchanges that are central to the federal health care law known as Obamacare. Health officials said Monday the rates are comparable to current commercial rates.
cray_0222.jpg

Vermont’s New Adjutant General

Newly elected Adjutant General Steven Cray discusses issues affecting the National Guard, VPR’s Hamilton Davis analyzes Vermont’s efforts to establish a health care exchange and we listen back to the voices in the news.

Analysis: Evaluating Health Board’s Performance On Hospital Budgets

The Green Mountain Care Board has now completed its approval process for the coming year’s budgets for Vermont’s 14 hospitals. It was the board’s first effort and marked the third iteration in the state’s effort to regulate health care costs. The first was the Hospital Data Council that ran through the 1980s and early 1990s; that morphed into BISHCA, which first got the power to set budgets in the mid-1990s; and now the Green Mountain Care Board, which has the same powers as BISHCA, but should have far greater weight than its predecessor.