As chairman of the National Governors Association (NGA), Governor Douglas lead the nation’s governors at their annual winter meeting in Washington this weekend. Healthcare availability and affordability were one focus point.
Yesterday on CNN’s State of the Union show, Douglas asserted that regardless of whether it’s a publicly funded program or private health insurance company we’re going to go broke if costs are not reduced. He also noted his pride in the steps taken here in Vermont (Catamount Health) and promised as NGA chairman to help lead the way nationally.
Douglas’ pride should be tempered somewhat from the findings of some research into Vermont’s Catamount Health plan. Douglas demanded the private/public structure as part of his support of the plan established in 2007 and the legislature included requirements for an outside efficiency study. Some study results are quoted in the Burlington Free Press. The research results find that Catamount Health could save $1 million a year if the state had been running it exclusively rather than the Douglas private/public arrangement that exists. Unfortunately no link to the study was provided.
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.”;
[emphasis added]
toward achieving the cost-cuts Douglas is so fond of exacting from vulnerable populations.
for running FrowningJim and the boyLunder into the ground for NOT sustaining the core functinos of Government. Mostly well deserved. They did indeed make the private is preferred decision on this cost / profit shift to the boys on the hill…that 7million had to come from somewhere, eh??
However, IF some other unnamed Gov from the past had not shifted all the bill paying functions related to medical off to that company that made Ross Perot a rich man, we would have an infastructure already set up for a single payer or true non profit healthcare provider/processor.
The comparison is often made to how private sector Executives do things better. I suppose if someone running a company had made a 2 Million dollar mistake they would be fired… Can we adopt some selective private sector actions???
Isn’t America great? And they’re just continuing to fleece us, smiling all the way to their $7 million parachutes. Douglas has done nothing for health care reform.