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The Vermont Health Care Security, Safety and Quality Improvement Plan

Ensuring coverage security to all Vermonters

All Vermonters, especially those who have no insurance and are not eligible for government plans, want affordable coverage that will provide access to needed health services. In order to provide security to the less than 10% of our residents who at any given time during the year might not have coverage, the House Health Care Committee proposes to completely reorganize the health care delivery system, impose a significant tax increase and possibly more than double the state’s general fund budget. The huge deficit we currently face in our Medicaid program suggests to many taxpayers and legislators that expanding government programs to cover everyone in the state is neither desirable, feasible, sensible nor reasonable.

We can fix the problem by providing access to affordable coverage that ensures the security of continuous health care coverage to any Vermonter.

The Vermont Health Security, Safety and Quality Improvement Plan

After a decade of studies, public hearings, surveys and reports it should be clear that what Vermonters want is the security of continuous health care coverage and a sustainable, affordable health care system. Achieving this goal does not necessarily require a tax-funded system, three more studies, reorganizing health care administration for the sixth time in fifteen years, six months of hearings by legislative committees or turning our health care system upside down.

The Vermont Health Security Plan takes very specific and immediate steps to improve our health care system, reduce costs, and provide health care security.  This plan hinges on the sum of the parts, no one part works without the other.  

Goals/Objectives - We intended to change the dynamic of the discussion, move the needle in the appropriate direction and provide a constructive foundation for the discussion on reforming health care in Vermont. 

Practical

Ř Increase system efficiency to lower costs of health care

Ř Expand access to coverage

Ř Improve the Quality, Safety and Effectiveness of health care

Political

Ř Every resident of Vermont will have the security of continuous health care coverage

Ř Vermont will score in the highest quartile in the nation for quality of health care

Ř Vermont will score in the lowest quartile in the nation for health care costs per capita

Ř Vermont’s Health Care system will enhance our ability to sustain, retain and attract business to the state

Vermont Health Security Plan

Ensuring coverage security to all Vermonters

All Vermonters, especially those who have no insurance and are not eligible for government plans, want affordable coverage that will provide access to needed health services. In order to provide security to the less than 10% of our residents who at any given time during the year might not have coverage, the House Health Care Committee proposes to completely reorganize the health care delivery system, impose a significant tax increase and possibly more than double the state’s general fund budget. The $80 million plus deficit we currently face in our Medicaid program suggests to many taxpayers and legislators that expanding government programs to cover everyone in the state is neither desirable, feasible, sensible nor reasonable.

We can fix the problem by providing access to affordable coverage that ensures the security of continuous health care coverage to any Vermonter.

  • Provide Vermonters with a low-cost, premium-driven Common Benefit Plan – this will create an environment where everyone can get into the system through an actuarially sound mechanism.  If all Vermonter’s don’t have insurance coverage – we are going to continue to pay for them the same expensive way we are today – through the cost shift.  Allow for incentives to be provided for individuals who participate in health lifestyles.

  • Provide patients with information about the medical services they seek.  Vermonters should be provided with the necessary information so that they can make decisions about the costs of the services. This will require the providers post prices for the most common services provided to patients.

  • Require that insurance carriers and health care providers utilize a common claims management system, utilize a communication and payment system similar to that of the financial services industry; reducing the costs associated with processing these transactions.

  • Provide Vermonters with a single standardized insurance card - a “smart card”, which will store necessary information about the patient’s coverage as well as medical information to allow for a higher level of quality to be provided to the patient.  Every Vermonter will carry the same card.

  • Fully fund the Vermont Blueprint for Health Care’s “Chronic Care” Initiative – so that patients with chronic diseases, like diabetes, are treated efficiently.  Treatment of patients with chronic diseases is much more costly when not treated appropriately.

  • Pay providers based on their performance – providers should be held to a standard of care that patients expect.

  • Create a patient safety and medical error reduction program and allow for a “safe apology” so that a provider may apologize to a patient; limiting the need for lengthy and costly litigation.

April 19, 2005

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Vermont Initiative for Universal Health Access

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