Vermont’s legislators are trying to implement new monitoring measures at hospitals and restrict how much they can pay for care, with suggestions that the state’s largest health care provider can work significantly.
Each of the legislative health care committees voted through a wide margin on Friday to move the bills that will reinforce the Green Mountain Care Board, the regulator of health care, and will monitor prices, get data and change the hospital’s rule.
Speaking on a large scale, the two bills said the chair of the Senate Committee, the Chair of the Senate Committee for Health and Welfare, the Senate Committee on Health and Welfare, the Senate Committee for Health and Welfare, the Senate Committee for Health and Welfare, the chair of the Senate Committee.
“The most important thing is that we are trying to get out of the health care crisis in which we are,” Luns said.
Many Vermont’s health care agencies are struggling to meet the end, and patients face growing costs and longer waiting lists.
These bills also reflect that Mike Fisher, the Chief Healthcare Advocate of the Vermont, has described the University of Vermont Health Network as a growing concern about the role in the state health care environmental system.
As the cost increases and healthcare agencies are rapidly critical, the network has recently checked and criticized the recently for cutting services, transferring money between Vermont and New York hospitals and paying several million dollars in executive bonuses.
“I hear a lot of doubts about the way I am flowing through the health network by lawmakers, and its impact on the health care system,” said Fisher. “And I think it is evident from the language that is being considered.”
“Vermont has the most transparent and strictly non -profit health care system in the country,” Annie McCike, a spokesman for the University of Vermont Health Network, said in an email.
“The network also shared the” target of making health care cheaper, and (we know) that we are in a crisis of access and affordable, “he said.
In the Senate
Wide and Volume Senate Bill, in 32 pages Its recent draftThe care board directs to determine the reference -based pricing, which is a cost -saving model in which the prices received from the hospital private insurance companies fall at the medical rates.
It will also instruct state officials and healthcare leaders to draft a “health care plan across the state” by 2029, which includes overall care goals for Vermont’s health care system, expected expenses and resources for the work of the board. Is
The bill will require hospitals to present more financial information on the Green Mountain Care Board and will force hospitals to inform state officials and lawmakers before cutting or cutting services to comply with their budget.
And this legislation will force the board to examine the hospital executive salaries and bonuses and compare them to the practitioners – provisions that came out in the context of the news that UVM Health Network executives received 3 million bonuses during the reduction of patients’ services last year.
Luns, the chair of the Senate Health Committee, said Friday that he and other lawmakers were concerned about some network prices and financial methods.
“We want to start creating a system that has more justice on the board, and it will stabilize the providers, and will help patients gain access to the need for their needs,” he said.
In the witness In the Senate this week, Lobby, the country of the Vermont Association of Hospitals and the health system, expressed support for some reforms in the payment, but said the organization would still need more information about the projects.
He also opposed some provisions that reinforce the mandate of receiving data from the Green Mountain Care Board hospitals. In some cases, he noted, the hospitals already needed to provide such information to the board-and in others, he said, the language board in the bill will provide unpaid and overbird power to the board.
“Some steps like we are doing together in order to find a way to determine a reference, Green said in an email on Friday,” Green said in an email on Friday. “Of course, there are other aspects of the legislative pieces that we are concerned about,” he said. We will continue to work with legislators, green mountain care boards, AHS and others to further strengthen these bills.
At home
Small House Bill If the insurance company “faces a severe and urgent threat to its solo, the board will be allowed to reduce the compensation rates paid by the insurance company. This new power will apply only to hospitals or networks, which has a positive operating margin and 135 days of cash.
Last week, Vermont’s largest private insurance, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Announced The Blue Cross Administrators said it lost $ 62 million in 2024. It was the largest annual deficit in the three years of three years.
Sarah Teachout, an abroad lobby of the Blue Cross, said in a media call last week, which means that the premium is likely to increase double digits for 2026.
The bill would also allow the board to appoint external observers if it was discovered that a hospital had made a “material misrepresentation” on the board or “materially non -compliance” with a budget order.
Chair of the Healthcare House Committee, D-Esax, Rap. Elsa Blake said the law was “in a brief interview on Friday” in response to the crisis in which we are at the same moment “.
“It was encouraged by the original insurance insurance for health insurance in Vermont, which was encouraged,” said Blake.
Mike Dell Tricko, president and CEO of the Vermont Association of Hospitals and Health System, told the House lawmakers Friday morning that they could not “support” their bill.
“I understand the gravity of these matters and the depth of our delivery system, as well as we have to face the affairs of the affairs, and I assure you that our hospitals are working deeply on these issues.”
However, reducing the compensation rates will effectively pull the money from the hospitals – and, Dale Tricko said, “If we take it through only one source, we are going to create a situation where we can risk hospitals at risk of failing and shutting down.”
But the Chair of the Green Mountain Care Board, Owen Foster, told the House lawmakers Friday morning that their legislation is an important tool in advancing the state’s health care system.
“Vermont is just like a large passive family who used to be wealthy, and now it is not,” Foster told the committee on Friday morning. “And we have real problems.”
