The Vermont legislature’s House Health Care Committee is nearing completion of a health care reform proposal and expects to vote it out of committee by the middle of this week. Committee members spent last week going over multiple drafts of the proposal with legislative staff, fine tuning language to ensure it conforms to committee goals.

The committee will meet with consultant Ken Thorpe Monday afternoon and hear feedback on the proposal from interested parties on Tuesday. If everything goes well, the committee vote on the bill will take place Wednesday.

Thorpe was also scheduled to appear at a Lake Champlain Chamber of Commerce legislative breakfast Monday morning in Burlington to describe his work for the legislature.

The committee made no significant changes last week to the plan that would:

·         Establish a subsidized benefit plan for Vermonters who have been uninsured for 12 months and voluntarily choose to participate;

·         Directs state government to establish and oversee a statewide chronic care management plan;

·         Increases Medicaid reimbursements for primary care services;

·         And strengthens BISHCA’s authority to require health insurers to lower premium growth rates to account for a reduction in the uninsured and an increase in Medicaid rates.

The committee anticipates part of the cost of the plan will be covered under the state’s Medicaid global commitment waiver that was hammered out last year with the federal government. The task of finding revenue sources to cover any additional financing will fall on the

Governor James Douglas and administration officials have been careful with its comments on the components of the House plan because this proposal is vastly different than the legislature’s reform bill (H.524) that Douglas vetoed last year and closer to the administration’s proposal. However, at his weekly news conference last week, the governor reiterated his strong opposition to new taxes to fund health care reform, putting him on a collision course with the legislative plan that will likely finance some portion of its plan with additional revenue.

Meanwhile, the Senate Health and Welfare Committee hopes to complete its work on a “consensus” bill that addresses administrative simplification, consumer price information, and other subjects that have broad support. Committee chairman Sen. James Leddy has set Friday as a deadline for a committee vote.

In other business, the Senate will give final consideration to a bill (H.404) to require insurers to include any mental health or substance abuse provider in its network if the provider is willing to accept the terms of the contract. The Senate is proposing to amend the House-passed bill.

And the House last week passed a bill (H.258) to require hospitals to include public disclosures of infection rates in required community reports.

For more information on legislative proposals, visit the Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Vermont website at www.bcbsvt.com or call Leigh Tofferi at (802) 223-6131 or Kathy Parry at (802) 371-3205. If you wish to discontinue receiving these updates or know of anyone else who would like to receive it, please call Kathy Parry or send an e-mail to parryk@bcbsvt.com