2006 Legislative Updates:

  January 3, 2006

First day of the session - felt like the first day of school - excitement and anxiety in the air. Senator Peter Welch, President Pro Tempore, says his guiding principals for health care reform this session are “coverage for everyone” and “everyone pays”. However, initial work on health care reform will be much more modest.

Today, the Senate started evaluating elements of the governor’s “Consensus Plan” -- often referred to as the “12 easy pieces”. While there has been discussion with the administration, Senator Leddy, chair off the Senate Health and Welfare Committee, emphasizes there is not yet agreement on a plan. The point person for the administration’s health care policy is Charlie Smith, Secretary, Agency of Administration.

Democrats have renamed the “Consensus Plan” to the “Common Sense Health Care Initiatives”. The easy items for the Democrats to support are electronic medical records, common claims processing form, healthy lifestyle discounts, and price and quality data that are easy for consumers to access and understand. Other provisions the two sides might agree on include adverse event reporting, safe apology and common credentialing of providers by the insurance companies. Full scale funding to expand the use of information technology will be problematic given all the other demands on the budget.

Meanwhile, House Speaker Gaye Symington says the House will first focus on a chronic care proposal. She makes a distinction between the governor’s “Chronic Care Initiative” and the Democrats’ “Chronic Care Management Plan”. Ken Thorpe, the consultant to the Commission on Health Care Reform, found the governor’s plan -- the Blueprint -- to be lacking in scope and funding.

Both the Senate and House efforts are likely to result in one combined bill the legislature sends to the governor early in the session. However, there is much discussion that there will be a broader second step. The speaker says the starting point will be last session’s H.524 -- Universal Access to Health Care in Vermont. However, it is not clear what this means – is H.524 the starting or ending poinnt for health care reform this session? Later in the session, the Health Care Committee will most likely focus on primary and preventive care.

The House Health Care Committee used H.524 to define a broad vision for health care reform. The bill provided, in stages, for primary, preventive and hospital access and coverage for all Vermonters. The Senate added a provision which offered immediate coverage for the uninsured. A major controversy between the legislature and the governor was the funding mechanism - a 3% tax on employers and a 1% tax on employees. To no one’s surprise, the governor carried out his promise of no new taxes and vetoed the bill.

For the rest of this week, the House Health Care Committee will hear testimony from several stakeholders: the Vermont League of Cities and Towns, the Grocers’ Association and Vermont Association of Hospitals and Health Systems. VAHHS is part of the “Williston Group” - originally an ad hoc coalition of the hospitals, insurance companies and business organizations, like the Vermont Chamber. Recently, several of the members have dropped out of the coalition.

Vermont Business for Social Responsibility was also scheduled to testify this week. However, VBSR has asked for more time to refine their proposal. Last year, their plan was to provide all Vermonters with access and coverage to hospitals.

Coalition 21 is developing a comprehensive matrix to measure legislative proposals against a series of benchmarks. Wednesday, Otto Engelberth, a member of Coalition 21, will explain the matrix concept to the House Health Care Committee.

Much more to come in the next hundred days...... stay tuned.

Vermont Health Care for All would like to thank VPIRG for their generous support of the 2006 Legislative Updates. They are also available on the VPIRG website http://www.vpirg.org. They will be produced throughout the 2006 Legislative session by Paul Forlenza. Forlenza can be contacted at paul@forlenza.us or 802-453-3592.