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Wednesday April 25, 2012
MONTPELIER (AP) — The Vermont Senate on Tuesday passed stage two of the state’s push to get as close as it can to a universal, single-payer health care system by late in this decade.
By a 20-7 vote, the Senate approved a House-passed bill that sets up a regulated health care marketplace, or exchange, and requires employers with 50 or fewer workers either to enroll their employees in the exchange or let them do so on their own, taking advantage of federal tax credits or subsidies to help them pay for it.
“It’s our intention to use the … exchange as sort of a pivot point,” said Sen. Claire Ayer, D-Addison and chairwoman of the Senate Health and Welfare Committee, in an interview after the Senate vote. “We want to take full advantage of it in terms of helping us define some of our cost-saving processes, develop our health information technology and get ourselves on a path to a single-pipe payer.”
Minor differences between the Senate and House versions likely will be worked out in a legislative conference committee before the bill is sent to Gov. Peter Shumlin, who is a strong backer.
Tuesday’s vote was the latest action in year two of a multi-year effort Shumlin began shortly after taking office last year to move Vermont well beyond the overhaul passed by Congress two years ago and closer to a Canadian-style, government-backed universal health coverage system.
But the long-term plan is fraught with uncertainty. The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to rule in June and could strike down parts of or the entire federal package. That would deprive states like Vermont the federal funding that is crucial to their own overhaul efforts. a change in federal administrations in the November election also likely would halt Vermont’s march to a top-to-bottom shakeup of its $5 billion a year health care system.
Even backers of the legislation acknowledged there are lots of questions, not only about whether Vermont will get to complete the changes that Shumlin made a centerpiece of his 2010 election campaign, but on how the big interim step — the health benefits exchange — would work.
Sen. Ann Cummings, D-Washington and chairwoman of the Senate Finance Committee, likened the passage of the legislation amid so many questions to “driving down the highway in a pea soup fog.”
Backers said the exchange would allow people a simple, computerized system to shop for health insurance, selecting things like the level of coverage, the level of copays they were willing to bear and other features. The actual payments to doctors, hospitals and other providers, would still be made by insurance companies, at least at first, Ayer said.
One principle of insurance is that the bigger the risk pool — the number of people covered — the easier it is to keep costs down. The bill imposes a requirement in stages that people sign up for health insurance through the exchange, starting with workers in companies with 50 employees or fewer.
Critics faulted the mandate. Jeffrey Wennberg, executive director of Vermonters for Health Care Freedom, a group opposing the state’s overhaul efforts, said the legislation “means that within two years upwards of 100,000 Vermonters will be forced to drop their current health insurance whether they want to or not, and purchase insurance through the exchange, which is untested, and undefined.”
The Vermont House also had health reform on its agenda Tuesday, easily giving preliminary approval to a bill calling on health insurance companies to make public their claim denial rates, executive salaries and other data.
Rep. Sarah Copeland-Hanzas, who described the measure to her House colleagues, said it was aimed at making Vermonters smarter health insurance consumers.
<a href="http://www.benningtonbanner.com/ci_20472676/vt-lawmakers-approve-health-care-measurestag:news.google.com,2005:cluster=http://www.benningtonbanner.com/ci_20472676/vt-lawmakers-approve-health-care-measuresWed, 25 Apr 2012 13:49:03 GMT”>Vt. lawmakers approve health care measures