You might call Al Gobeille a straight shooter.
He speaks his mind, and he is not afraid to tell you how he really feels. He knows how to run a business and how to get things done.
As one of five members of the Green Mountain Care Board, Gobeille, 47, will play a major role in laying the groundwork for a new health care system in Vermont. He is a prominent member of the business community, and much of his experience with health care issues is as an employer.
Gobeille and his wife operate three restaurants in downtown Burlington. They have more than 100 employees, and they offer insurance for all their full-time workers. The problem, Gobeille says, is the insurance they can offer is not good enough. Health problems for employees can cause hardships even with insurance, and billing and claims issues create headaches for everyone.
Gobeille said the complexities with insurance and administrative costs create problems for both employers and employees.
“Whenever you can’t understand something, it’s not a good system,” he said.
Gobeille has worked on health care policy issues as a member of the Visiting Nurse Association Board of Directors, an employer, and a member of the Shelburne Selectboard.
His answer to creating a system that works: “Don’t politicize it.”
Gobeille said the partisan arguments in health care detract from any progress being made to actually improve the system.
He says he constantly hears arguments against reforming the health care system, but when he asks people if they are satisfied with the industry, they usually have some complaint.
It’s easy to pre-judge Al Gobeille. He has a clean-cut appearance and a slightly formal manner that might be a holdover from his days at Norwich University and four years on active duty as a lieutenant in the military. Gobeille’s mother was a medical technician, and his father was a doctor, and he describes himself as a “rowdy kid.” The discipline from Norwich University and the military allowed him to put that energy into something productive.
“It allowed me to take that angst, and turn it into a useful adult life,” Gobeille says.
You would think he’s pretty serious. But once you get down to it, he has a refreshing sense of humor that might come as a bit of a surprise. He cracks jokes in Green Mountain Care Board meetings and tries to keep things light.
Between juggling a large Vermont business, attending selectboard meetings, raising three kids, and now working to reform the state’s health care system, Gobeille has his hands full.
“The great thing about the restaurant business is, it’s counter-cyclical to normal life,” he says.
Gobeille may joke about how he works around the clock, but the experience of having employees really let him see the human side of paying for health care. He said employees constantly come to him asking about issues with their insurance providers.
A few years ago, he participated in a study by the Vermont Chamber of Commerce about health care and became more interested in the way the system works.
“I got slowly more involved in it from the perspective that ‘This can’t work this way,’” Gobeille says.
He experienced the vagaries of the payment system firsthand recently when his son contracted a form of appendicitis that cost the family $20,000 out-of-pocket. A similar health emergency could have cost one of his employees extreme financial hardship, he said.
Gobeille says Catamount Health and Blueprint for Health, the programs that cover uninsured Vermonters and the costs of caring for people with chronic illness respectively, are the best in the country, but there is a long way to go.
As a prominent member of the business community, Gobeille will likely face some pressure to represent the interests of employers. When Gov. Peter Shumlin appointed Gobeille to the Green Mountain Care Board, he said the reaction from the business community ranged from “everything from ‘thank God’ to ‘he’s one of them.’”
While he is sympathetic to the struggles of employers and employees alike, Gobeille says the main goal is to fix a system that is not working. He says one of the main reasons it is so difficult to make headway in health care is the fact that when you say things like “single-payer” and “universal health care” people immediately pick sides.
Gobeille doesn’t think it has to be that way.
This frankness is characteristic of the successful restaurateur. As Lt. Gov. Phil Scott says, “Al speaks his mind.”
When Scott first met Gobeille, people warned him he might be difficult because he is so direct, but that’s what the lieutenant governor likes about Gobeille. Scott now relies on Gobeille as a sounding board for a lot of his ideas. As co-owner of DuBois Construction, Inc., Scott is also sensitive to the concerns of the business community. He said he is not completely sold on the idea of a single-payer health care system, in which all providers would be reimbursed through a single mechanism funded through a single insurance pool, but Gobeille’s presence on the board offers some comfort.
Gobeille’s personal background and experiences in business led him to the Green Mountain Care Board. As an employer and a person, he sees the hardships that health care costs can cause. Whatever side of the political divide you fall on, Gobeille says, we need to do something.
“We’re at a breaking point,” he says.