FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
March 12, 2010
CONTACTS: Doug Racine 802-343-5417 / Amy Shollenberger 802-793-1114
www.dougracine.com
Comprehensive Health Care Bill Moving Forward
Doug Racine leads process to redesign health care system
MONTPELIER, VT — The Senate Health and Welfare Committee today unanimously passed S.88, which calls for a complete overhaul of Vermont’s health care system. The bill creates an oversight panel to hire expert advisors who will design an implementation plan for health care reform. The stated purpose of the redesign is “to ensure that individual programs and initiatives can be placed into a larger, more rational design for access to, the delivery of, and the financing of health care in Vermont.”
“This bill lays out principles and goals which will ensure that our new health care system will guarantee all Vermonters quality, affordable health care every day of their lives,” committee chairman Doug Racine noted. “We’ve made a lot of progress by tweaking our current system and picking the low hanging fruit, but now we need systemic changes to make real progress.”
Under the proposal, the new health care system will be in place by July 1, 2012. The bill calls for three complete system designs – one of which must be a government-financed, single payer system – to come back to the governor and the legislature by January 1, 2011. The legislature will then choose one of the designs and begin the implementation phase. The designs called for in the bill must be complete packages, ready for execution as soon as the preferred option is chosen.
“This is the essential next step in health care reform that will lead to universal access to affordable health care for all Vermonters,” Racine explained. “What is needed is true systemic reform, and we cannot have real reform without a real plan to create a whole new system—and this bill creates that new system.”
The bill will now move to the Appropriations committee and then to the full senate. “I am optimistic that we can get this bill through the senate quickly,” Racine commented. “By listening to the various stakeholders and including many different interests in the discussion, we have crafted a bill that achieves systemic reform and addresses the concerns that have been raised.”
Racine, a candidate for governor, has made health care reform one of the priorities of his campaign. More information can be found at his website: www.dougracine.com.
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What this press release neglects to mention is that before Racine got his hands on it, S.88 was a bill to establish single-payer. Now it’s a bill to study it for another 2 years.
The only thing Racine is leading here is an effort to sabotage the movement toward single-payer in Vermont.