Commission to assess key components of Catamount Health

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(Host) Vermont’s Health Care Reform Commission is getting ready to assess some of the key components of ‘Catamount Health Care’ – that’s the program that provides coverage to uninsured Vermonters.

As part of its review, the Commission will examine the possibility of creating a "public plan" to provide coverage.         

VPRs Bob Kinzel reports.

(Kinzel) When lawmakers passed a health care reform law in 2006, they included an automatic trigger in the plan that would be activated if the goal of reducing the state’s uninsured rate to 4% wasn’t met by the 2010 fiscal year. 

Although progress has been made, the goal hasn’t been reached. The Vermont Banking and Insurance Department has pegged the state’s uninsured rate at roughly 7.6%.

Jim Hester is the director of the Health Care Reform Commission.

He says the original law calls on his group to study if the current practice of providing Catamount coverage through two private insurance companies, Blue Cross and MVP, is as cost effective as creating a new state public plan:

(Hester "Is it economic to have two private companies administering separate programs – having the complexity that comes from having multiple offerings and people having to choose offerings and the steps that they have to go through?  So it’s more on the administration costs and efficiency and barriers created by having multiple private options as opposed to a single public option."

(Kinzel) The Commission will also study if Vermont should mandate that all individuals have health care coverage much in the same way that the state requires all drivers to have auto insurance.

Chittenden senator Doug Racine is the chairman of the Senate Health and Welfare committee. He thinks it’s time to examine the individual mandate approach:

(Racine) "I think if our goal is to have universal coverage for people we are going to have to look at a universal mandate, whether it’s in the existing system or whether we’re heading to a completely new system. If you want to get everybody covered there’s going to have to be a requirement."

(Kinzel) Commission director Hester says his group is set to begin its review but there’s a problem – if Congress passes a reform bill this Fall, it could have a big impact on individual states:

(Hester) "The Feds may be putting some things in place that point us in one direction or the other in terms of how they set up the coverage requirements for states…that may direct us to do things and change the set of options that we have. So we can’t really define the scope for this Catamount study until the national framework gets clarified."

(Kinzel) Despite the uncertainty surrounding the federal health care debate, Hester says the Commission hopes to present its recommendations to the Legislature in January.

For VPR News I’m Bob Kinzel in Montpelier.

 

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