A recent poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation showed that most Americans
are uninformed about the federal health care changes that are coming,
and about how health care exchanges are going to work. That situation
appears to bear out in Vermont, too.
The effort to get Vermonters
health records computerized and on line has hit some technological roadblocks. Despite years of work and
millions of dollars spent, officials say the systems are not fully compatible
and the information they produce is not always accurate.
The Vermont House
has given preliminary approval to a bill under which the state would take the
next big step on a path to sweeping health insurance reform passed in broad
outline last year.
More
than 100 people have applied to be members of the state’s new Health Care
Board. That’s
the group that will oversee health care in Vermont in the coming years.
Legislation
overhauling Vermont’s health care system cleared its final
hurdle today as the House approved the bill. But
the new compromise plan doesn’t answer a question that many people in the
Statehouse have asked: How should a single payer system be paid for?
Vermont legislators are poised to send a historic health care
bill to the governor. On Tuesday, House
and Senate negotiators resolved the last of their differences, and a final vote in the legislature should come by the
end of the week.
The Vermont Senate has given its final approval to legislation
that makes significant changes to the state’s health care system. While the Senate bill is slightly different from the one passed by the House last
month, lawmakers believe it will be easy to
reconcile the two and send the plan to the Governor.
The
Senate has started its debate of the big health care initiative advocated by
Governor Peter Shumlin. With more than a dozen amendments to the bill, the discussion is expected to take at least two days.
Although legislation to restructure Vermont’s health care system doesn’t commit the state to a single payer system, supporters say it does put
the state on the path to such an approach. And that has some lawmakers concerned.
The key to winning the Senate Health and Welfare committee’s unanimous approval was a provision that calls for a comprehensive study before the state
considers adopting a single payer system.