Vermont's Healthcare Reform Proposal - Catamount Health
The following information was released by the state of Vermont:
Catamount Health was designed to better managing chronic care and making health care affordable and accessible for all Vermonters.
Provisions of Catamount Health are the following:
- Everyone who is uninsured for 12 months will have access to - and will help pay for - a comprehensive health insurance package. The benefits will be administered through the private market and premiums will be based on income.
- Everyone pays their fair share through an affordable premium structure. In addition, employers will pay an assessment based on the number of their employees who are uninsured. Estimates that at least 25,000 Vermonters who are now uninsured will obtain health coverage.
- Primary care, preventive and chronic care, acute episodic care, and hospital services
- Reimbursement for medical services equal to ten percent above cost
- 25,000 estimated to enroll, including new Medicaid enrollment
- Chronic care management
- Based on the principle that everybody is covered and everybody pays
- Individuals pay sliding scale premiums based on income
- Employers pay an assessment based on the number of their employees (measured as full time equivalents) who are uninsured, exempting the first eight FTEs in fiscal years 2007 and 2008, six FTES in 2009, and four FTES in and after 2010
- Other revenues from increases in tobacco taxes and through matching federal dollars
- State fiscal obligations protected through caps on enrollment
- Deliver the right care at the right time to the most expensive health care consumers – those with chronic conditions. It makes chronic care management available to every Vermonter, whether privately insured, covered under a public program, or currently uninsured.
- Establish an outstanding system of chronic care management, which includes: Early and coordinated screening for chronic conditions like diabetes or asthma, better management of chronic care, emphasis on patient self-management, and payment to providers that rewards quality and disease management, not just quantity.
- Codifies the Vermont “Blueprint for Health” prevention and chronic disease management plan and directs chronic care management in Medicaid and Catamount Health that will save an estimated 5-10 percent in health care costs.
- Allow every Vermonter to receive CDC recommended immunizations for free after October 2, 2007.
Source: Health Care Reform Initiatves, Quick Overview, 2006
To learn more, please visit http://www.leg.state.vt.us/HealthCare/2006LegAction.htm
This page was last updated on April 17, 2007
