200 million dollars.
This is the figure that the Vermont health care system must save – very quickly – in order to maintain the Vermont health insurance premium increases to around 5% next year for the largest state insurer, according to the Green Mountain Care Board.
If these savings do not materialize in the coming months, insurance premiums for residents and small businesses from Blue Cross Blue Shield in Vermont could increase by around 15% to 20% in 2026, if not more, said Jessica Holmes, member of the board of directors on Wednesday morning.
This suggests, in order To keep the care at least at an affordable distance for the VermontState hospitals, primary, specialized and long -term care providers must transform – and quickly.
“It’s really difficult to hear, and I recognize it, but I think vermonts cannot afford the health care system we have currently,” said Holmes.
On Wednesday, health care leaders came to a joint meeting of the Senate committees and the health care chamber with a message: we work there. The CEOs of three rural hospitals – Gifford Health Care, Springfield Hospital and North Country Hospital – presented their efforts to reduce costs, including the elimination of certain services, the staff cut and the pooling of resources with neighboring providers.
And Brendan Krause, director of the Vermont health care reform at the Social Services Agency, showed legislators the framework of a plan of approximately eight months in which the agency would meet the providers of the State and offer “technical assistance” to help “administrative cost reduction and the rationalization of medical services, etc.”, said Krause.
But for several room legislators, these efforts have appeared neither effective nor urgent enough to save these 200 million dollars – and extinguish ruinous hikes.
Without greater collaboration and greater coordination through the health care ecosystem, the Topper McFaun representative, R -Barre Town, said: “All the discussion you have – let’s be honest, it does not work.”
Senator Ginny Lyons, D-Chittenden Southeast, president of health and well-being of the Senate, agrees.
“We can’t wait for the change to happen,” she said. “We have to direct the change.”
—Pet of Auria
Aware
The Attorney General of Vermont, Clark, joins the main prosecutors of 11 other states in a trial contesting the constitutionality of President Donald Trump’s pricing policies, the prosecutor’s office was announced on Wednesday.
The Attorneurs General, who filed the trial on Wednesday before the American Court of International Trade in New York, argue that the four Trump decrees imposing prices on imports from other violent countries of the American Constitution, which attributes the congress, not the president, the “power of installation and to collect taxes, duties, taxes and excitements”.
“President Trump’s illegal prices will harm companies and consumers in Vermont,” Clark said in a press release on Wednesday announcing the prosecution. “I continue the Trump administration for the tenth time on these illegal prices to protect work vermans, small businesses and our economy.”
The trial requires a preliminary and permanent injunction which prevents customs and the border patrol from enforcing the prices.
Learn more about the new trial here.
– Habib Sabet
Service journalism
Last week, this newsletter broke the huge story that Google was wrongly displaying the words “Olímpico committee of Portugal” At the top of many Vermont state documents in its research results.
Just after the publication of this edition of the final reading, Google solved the problem, according to the digital services agency. Words no longer appear in Google search results, according to the agency and some of the VTDIGGER test research.
Just another example of the striking journalism of VTDIGGER had an impact!
– Peter d’Auria
Clarification: This newsletter has been updated to reflect a clarification that the Breen Mountain Care Board issued Thursday that the $ 200 million in health savings necessary to maintain health insurance premiums of around 5% only apply to the Blue Cross Blue Shield plans in Vermont, not all insurers.