Now that Gov. Peter Shumlin has decided not to pursue a single payer health care plan in 2015, the development of a comprehensive payment reform system will likely become one of the top priorities in the coming year. Some state officials think this plan could have a major impact on efforts to control future health care costs.
"If we could do that, that would be profound," Green Mountain Care Board chairman Al Gobeille on the Board's efforts to cap health care costs at three percent a year.
For the past year, the Green Mountain Care Board has been working on ways to change the way that the state's health care system reimburses providers for care.
The goal is to move away from the current quantity based system, known as "fee for service", towards a quality based system. The new system would also allow doctors and hospitals to be reimbursed for providing a wide range of preventative health care services to their patients.
Al Gobeille is the chairman of the Green Mountain Care Board. He says payment reform is now the state's number one health care issue.
"Single Payer financing always took the headline,” said Gobeille. “Now I think the spotlight will shift to us and we had better be up for the task."
Gobeille is optimistic that Vermont will be granted what is known as an "all payer" waiver from the federal government. He says this will allow the Board to implement a payment reform plan for all Medicare and Medicaid patients and he hopes that all of Vermont's private health insurance companies will also be part of this new system.
Gobeille says the goal is limit the growth of health care costs to less than three percent a year.
"That we could for a large portion of the care delivered to Vermonters, basically agree to a trend we can live with,” said Gobeille. “If we could do that, that would be profound."
Gobeille says there are still a lot of Vermonters who can't afford health care coverage and he hopes lawmakers will address this issue in the upcoming session.
"You know those people don't just go away because the problem doesn't just go away,” said Gobeille. “So we've got to take this setback and we've got to move forward with solving the problem we set out to solve which is the rising cost of health care."
Gobeille says he also wants lawmakers to consider the possibility of creating a new health care consumer department that would be separate from the Green Mountain Care Board.
