Vt. governor picks panel for single-payer health plan
Associated Press
September 14, 2011
Anya Rader Wallack, a health care reform special assistant to Governor Shumlin, will chair the five-member board.
MONTPELIER – A health care policy specialist will lead Vermont’s Green Mountain Care board, the panel that will be responsible for implementing the state’s single-payer health care system, Governor Peter Shumlin said yesterday.
Advocates for the plan say the single-payer system will help control health care costs and guarantee coverage for Vermonters regardless of whether they have a job with health insurance.
Anya Rader Wallack of Calais will be chairwoman of the five-member board. Wallack has served as Shumlin’s special assistant for health care reform since shortly after he took office January.
“In putting together this team, I looked for five really smart people who are fully committed to the goal of controlling health care costs, achieving universal coverage, and who can work as a team,’’ Shumlin said. “I also looked for people who could think creatively about how to encourage and reward Vermonters and Vermont health care practitioners for improving health and getting the most value out of our health care dollars.’’
Others on the committee:
– Al Gobeille of Shelburne, a Chittenden County restaurant owner who is active in the Lake Champlain Chamber of Commerce and serves on the Shelburne select board. He is also board member of the Visiting Nurse Association and a member of the state of Vermont’s payment reform advisory committee.
– Dr. Karen Hein of Jacksonville. Hein is a past president of the William T. Grant Foundation, which funds research to improve the lives of adolescents throughout the United States.
– Con Hogan of Plainfield, an international consultant and past secretary of the Vermont Agency of Human Services.
– Dr. Allan Ramsay, a family physician from Essex Junction who is also a professor in the University of Vermont Department of Family Medicine since 1980.
Earlier this year, the Legislature passed the law making Vermont the first state with a single-payer health care system.
Among the board’s jobs will be to set up a payment system under which hospitals and other providers will be paid a set amount to provide health care to a set population, as opposed to the current system of fee for service.
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