Leaders in the Vermont Senate say they plan to take up a bill expanding workers’ compensation coverage of mental health, even though the legislation missed a deadline in mid-March.
To pass the bill, the Senate will attach the language from H.197 to another bill related to economic development that has already passed the House, according to Sen. Virginia Lyons, D-Chittenden.
This type of move is used near the end of a legislative session to pass a priority bill that hasn’t met previous deadlines.
Senate President Pro Tempore Tim Ashe, D/P-Chittenden, said Tuesday that the upper chamber expected the House to pass the bill, and therefore send it over to the Senate, nearly a month ago.
The bill instead lingered in the House Commerce and Economic Development Committee, where critics raised concerns about the bill’s cost to businesses and towns. The committee passed it out on a 9-1 vote last week.
Tuesday morning the House sent the bill to the Appropriations Committee to review how much money it would cost the state if it became law. The committee, which had already taken testimony Friday, then passed H.197 on an 11-0 vote.
Analysts at the Joint Fiscal Office said the cost was hard to predict, but estimated it would be less than $126,000 a year, starting in fiscal 2019. The analysts said any other costs of covering mental health for first responders and other workers would be borne by towns and businesses.
Ashe said he is not concerned about the cost to towns.
“Municipalities have been raising concerns over almost every policy that has been raised over the years relating to workers’ comp,” Ashe said. “This is an instance where, I think in some regards, the worst-case scenarios have been quite overblown.”
“We’re talking about a once-every-year-or-so type of scenario based on past practice, at least in conversation with the state police and with the professional firefighters,” he said. “Whether that expands to two or three a year, the implications for rates across the state will be negligible.”
“On the other hand is the flip side, which is, the people who do not seek the treatment they need, guess where they wind up,” he said. “If they cannot continue to work because they did not properly seek the care that they needed at the time, they end up in our health care system.”
“So they’re winding up soaking up mental health and other health care expenses, which we’re all collectively paying for,” he said. “Really it’s trying to get the right intervention at the right time when it’s cheaper and more humane, and not waiting for someone who’s really spiraled out of control.”
Lyons said some towns are better than others at meeting the needs of first responders who go through traumatic experiences. She said the Senate Health and Welfare Committee has learned that during testimony on H.145, which would create a mental health response commission.
“We’re talking in Health and Welfare right now about mental health support for folks through a new commission, and some towns and cities are more advanced,” she said. They’ve had more experience — through their police officers or their EMTs — in dealing with mental health.”
“What we would like to do — in a collaborative process through our Health Care committees as well as our Finance and Economic Development committees — is to bring those things together,” Lyons said.
She said the committees would look at all parts of the House’s bill and move forward, and that the bill’s language might change before it passes the Senate.
