In sports,
you can’t excel unless you get out of your comfort zone. The same is true in just about any other
aspect of life. A lot of the issues we
deal with in the legislature are not earthshaking, but it is not unusual for
the legislature to tackle major problems that don’t have simple solutions. Some of those problems include drug abuse,
climate change, education funding, and health care. Since Vermont Health Connect has been in the
national spotlight with a critical article in Newsweek recently, let me say a
few words about it.
The article
was very critical about a status update by contracted software developer CGI
last July that purported to demonstrate an actual connection between the
Vermont Health Connect website and the federal database. It was eventually revealed that the so-called
“live” screens were actually pre-programmed with the results. The author of the article, based on an
anonymous interview, claimed that the Vermont Health Connect staff knew that
the demo was not “live”. However,
Vermont Health Connect Commissioner Mark Larson retorted that the Vermont
Health Connect staff believed that what they were seeing was a live demo.
Admittedly,
the Vermont Health Connect website had a terrible start out of the gate in
October, but it has steadily improved and was successfully processing
applications since late November. It is
still having a problem interfacing with federal databases, and the capability
to process payments electronically is not yet active.* However, these problems will be resolved in
time, and health insurance options for families previously unable to afford
insurance are now available.
The problems with Vermont Health Connect have raised concerns about Vermont’s track toward universal health care coverage, called Green Mountain Care, that is scheduled to become operational in 2017. The Green Mountain Care Board has been working with financial consultants, hospitals, health care providers, and state economists to determine realistic funding options that will decrease the rate of health care cost increases. While everyone would like to know today what these funding options will be, it is necessary to take the time to do a thorough analysis to get it right. The Vermont legislature gave that time to the Green Mountain Care Board for that reason and, through its relevant committees, is following the progress of the Green Mountain Care Board closely and taking the experience with Vermont Health Connect into consideration. While there were voices that said controlling the cost of health care was too difficult a problem to solve, Vermont decided to step up to the challenge, to go for the gold, because all Vermonters should have access to good health care.
* After this article was published in The Citizen, I was informed that the system has been interacting with the federal databases since October.