Time in committee is particularly precious on crossover week in the second year of a biennium, when most bills must be voted out by Friday or die.
Despite that, the Senate Health and Welfare Committee has spent several hours recently focusing on S.151, a 20-page bill that has drawn opposition from an unusually diverse set of outside groups — as well as the apparent majority of the committee itself.
The bill, sponsored by Sen. Ginny Lyons, D-Chittenden Southeast, the chair of the committee, includes a range of provisions in its latest draft. They include language to expand insurance coverage for colon cancer screening, a measure to allow children who are 12 or older to consent to medical care to prevent sexually transmitted infections and an expression of support for Vermont’s application to the federal AHEAD program, a new model for health care reform.
Anti-vaccine activists, including Children’s Health Defense, the national organization chaired by independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., are against it, fearing that children would unilaterally choose to be vaccinated against sexually transmitted infections. The anti-abortion group Vermont Right to Life and the conservative Vermont Family Alliance have also come out in opposition.
The chair of the Green Mountain Care Board and the head of the Office of the Health Care Advocate have also critiqued the bill, saying it could end up weakening the powers of the care board — something another bill sought to do earlier this session.
Also, an apparent majority of Senate Health and Welfare’s own committee members don’t like it — a division that sparked a series of heated exchanges and led Sen. Ruth Hardy, D-Addison, to walk out of committee on Wednesday after she tried, and failed, to call for a vote.
“None of us support it except for you,” Hardy told Lyons Thursday morning. “And it’s really just, frankly, torturing the rest of the committee.”
“Thank you for expressing your opinion,” Lyons replied. “So, we’re going to continue.”
Roughly half an hour later, after Lyons asked for a tweak to legislative language, Hardy jumped in again to ask why she was making changes to a bill that — one day before crossover — had no evident future.
“Why are you continuing to make changes to a bill that is not going to pass?” Hardy said.
“Because I can,” Lyons said.
“So you’re just doing this as a, like, power move?” Hardy said. “I do not understand this.”
“Senator, (I’m) trying to understand the issues here, thank you,” Lyons said.
“We have other work that could be done,” Hardy said.
“Thank you for your comment,” Lyons said.
Hardy left the room again.
In an interview Wednesday, Hardy said she saw the bill as an unwise attempt to weaken the Green Mountain Care Board’s regulatory powers.
“It should not move forward,” she said. “It is a bill that is not productive, and, in fact, in many ways is destructive.”
Lyons, in an interview Thursday, defended the time the committee had spent on the bill, saying that changes were still being made throughout the week — changes that committee members had not yet seen. She also bemoaned what she called “the devolution of professionalism around this bill.”
But, she said, she has no illusions about the legislation.
“I am not optimistic in any way that we will be acting on the bill this session,” she said.
