Chairman of the National Governors Association (NGA), Vermont Governor Jim Douglas will lead the nation’s governors at their annual winter meeting in Washington this weekend. Healthcare availability and affordability one of Douglas’ focus points will be a subject of discussion at the gathering in Washington.
Vermont’s Catamount Health the public/private healthcare plan is one innovation Douglas often notes:
“I am proud of the steps we have taken in Vermont. My chairman’s initiative focuses on helping governors lead the way in improving the quality of our system, providing more insurance coverage and addressing key cost drivers to ensure we have a system that is affordable, accessible and accountable.” said Douglas in a press release prior to his trip to Washington.
The supposedly tightfisted governor's pride may be tempered somewhat from the findings of some research into Vermont’s Catamount Health plan. The plan established in 2007 included requirements for an outside efficiency study. Some results are quoted in the Burlington Free Press unfortunately no link to the study was provided.
The research results put forward that the Catamount Health could save $1 million a year if the state had been running it exclusively rather than the private/public arrangement that exists.
Researchers suggested if the same state office that administers Medicaid and the Vermont Health Access Program also ran Catamount, administrative costs would decrease by about $1 million a year.
Peter Sterling, executive director of the Vermont Campaign for Health Care Security Education Fund, called the researchers’ finding significant: “We have overpaid at least $2 million to let private insurance do what the state could have done.”
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