Updated at 5:56 p.m.
In a surprise announcement Wednesday, Kevin Mullin, head of a powerful regulatory body in Vermont health care’s ecosystem, said he will retire in July.
Mullin chairs the Green Mountain Care Board, which regulates hospital budgets and insurance prices, among other aspects of the state’s health care sector. Mullin’s impending retirement comes as the care board considers a request for a hefty increase in service charges from the University of Vermont Health Network, owner of the state’s largest hospital. If the board approves the increase, Vermonters carrying private insurance could face significant increases in premiums.
In his announcement at the board’s meeting on Wednesday, Mullin said he’s leaving his post to spend some time with family and travel and “do the things I always wanted to do.”
In a phone interview after the meeting, Mullin said he wanted to retire last year, but felt he couldn’t do so in the middle of the unfolding coronavirus crisis.
Mullin has been the board chair since 2017. His term would have expired in 2024. A representative from Gov. Phil Scott’s office said on Wednesday that Mullin is stepping down “on his own volition.”
Mullin is leaving as inflation and ballooning provider salaries threaten to overtake Vermont’s health care sector, which comprises roughly a fifth of the state economy. His tenure on the board has been marked by the failure and ongoing recalibration of OneCare Vermont, an integral part of the state’s health reform efforts. He also presided over the board as Springfield Hospital faced and eventually emerged from bankruptcy.
“You never accomplish as much as you set out to do, but that comes with the territory,” he said.
Mullin, 63, has been in public life since the 1980s. He was a Republican state senator from Rutland from 2003 to 2017, and helped write the legislation that created the care board. He served on various committees, including the Senate Committee on Health and Welfare and the Senate Economic Development Committee.
A Rutland native, Mullin began his political career on the Rutland Board of Aldermen. He was originally a Democrat, but he switched to the Republican Party early in his tenure.
Vermont’s health care bubble is full of regulators who jumped ship to work at the entities they once oversaw. Former Green Mountain Care Board chairs Al Gobeille and Anya Rader Wallack landed at University of Vermont Health Network after leaving their posts, for example. But Mullin says he has no such plans.
“I have no interest in coming back,” he said. “You won’t see me in any entity that I regulated, period.”
Gov. Phil Scott has yet to announce his choice for Mullin’s successor. The governor’s office has final authority over appointments to the Green Mountain Care Board, but a short list of possibilities will be compiled by a committee that does not include care board members or staff members.
The process takes time. Mullin’s seat is likely to be vacant if the appointment process works as it has in the past. Scott recently appointed Dartmouth professor Thomas Walsh to a care board seat that had been vacant for months.
Other board members are Jessica Holmes, an economics professor at Middlebury College, and former public servants Robin Lunge and Tom Pelham.
Correction: Due to an editing error, an earlier version of this story misstated the year Mullin became chair of the Green Mountain Care Board.
