After two years of preparing to tackle health care reform, the Shumlin administration is losing its most important player, Anya Rader Wallack, the
chair of Green Mountain Care Board. Her departure will change the effort, but won’t derail it.
VPR news analyst, Hamilton Davis, talks with Vermont Edition about what Governor Peter Shumlin has done so far to help control the cost of health care.
The House Health Care
committee has voted to kill legislation that provides subsidies to help low and
moderate income Vermonters purchase health insurance.
Critics of Governor Peter
Shumlin’s plans for a single payer health system charge his administration
studied how to pay for it, but then halted the work. The group Vermonters for
Health Care Freedom alleges the administration looked at a financing plan based
on new taxes but then stopped because of political concerns.
The Green Mountain Care Board has set forth a tentative target inflation
rate of 4 percent for Vermont’s
14 hospitals for the coming fiscal year, a target that would add about $85
million to the current statewide spending level of $2.136 billion. The final
system increase will depend on the board’s decisions on the individual
hospitals’ requests.
A number of Vermont business leaders say the Shumlin Administration is
trying to punish thousands of small businesses when a new health care Exchange
goes into place next January.
This week, volunteers marked Martin Luther
King Day by doing community service, the state said detecting future leaks at
Vermont Yankee may be compromised, committees looked into high gasoline prices,
Legislators were introduced to the Health care Exchange software and Vermonters
hit the ice for some pond hockey.
Officials
from Burlington’s Fletcher Allen Health Care, Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical
Center and other hospitals serving Vermont have joined to create the nation’s
first statewide accountable care organization. Friday’s
announcement means about 42,000 of Vermont’s 118,000 Medicare beneficiaries will get
their care from the new entity.