Category Archives: Health care reform

Cautionary notes on the Phil Scott inevitability, part 2: Bad candidates

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So I forced myself to watch the Republican presidential debate last week. Overall impressions?

Ben Carson excepted, these guys are articulate spokespeople for a worldview completely at odds with reality. Also, whoever gets the nomination is going to be an albatross around Phil Scott’s neck.

I mentioned this in my previous post, but the point deserves further attention.

In a relatively serious, issue-oriented debate, the Republicans presented an array of positions that made George W. Bush look like a liberal. And we all know how popular George W. was in Vermont — the only state he never visited as President. (Dick Cheney made one stop, a quick in-and-out at the Burlington Airport.)

To put it another way, the Republican presidential nominee will not help Phil Scott or his party-broadening project. Not the least tiny little bit.

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Woolf’s Duplicitous Delicatessen

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Our Motto: “Where There’s Always a Thumb on the Scale”

It’s been a while since I chronicled the dishonest commentary of Art Woolf, a.k.a. Vermont’s Loudest Economist. Every Thursday, he blesses us with a few hundred words of pro-business bumpf salted with carefully chosen figures designed to conceal the flaws in his reasoning.

Heck, I could easily write a riposte every week, but that gets old after a while.

However, the two most recent entries in the Woolf oeuvre merit scrutiny, because they touch on significant public policy debates: taxes and health care reform.

His November 5 missive revisits one of his favorite themes: Vermont’s taxes are too damn high. Well, he doesn’t say so exactly; but he presents an array of misleading statistics to bolster that popular conservative argument.

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Kesha Ram wants none of that anti-vaxxer stuff

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Note: I’ve received a further response from Mr. Batham, which has been added to the post below.

Not long after I posted my previous entry about David Zuckerman and Kesha Ram, I got a phone call from Brandon Batham, who runs Ram’s campaign for lieutenant governor. He wanted to assure me that Rep. Ram is not an anti-vaxxer, and sent along this statement via email:

Kesha fully believes in and accepts the science behind vaccinations. She is not an “anti-vaxxer.” As an 8-year State Representative, her goal is to keep our children—collectively and individually—healthy and safe. This will also be her goal as Lieutenant Governor.

Kesha remains concerned that parents opposed to vaccines will claim the religious exemption and remove their children from our medical and education systems. That is why she voted for an amendment presented by Rep. Ann Donahue that would have required parents to consult with a health care provider and review educational materials on the benefits of vaccines in order to receive an exemption.

She is in favor of removing both the philosophical and religious exemptions to vaccinations, and replacing them with an exemption request made in consultation with a medical professional related to adverse health effects.

I’ve sent Brandon an email requesting a bit of clarification, especially on whether she plans to pursue changes in the vaccination law as a legislator or, potentially, as lieutenant governor. I’ll update this post when I get a reply. Reply now received; see below.

Otherwise, okay, she’s not an anti-vaxxer. I still have some concerns, though.

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Bizarro Dave

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I’m writing an awful lot about David Sunderland lately, but then he’s been doing a lot of dumb stuff lately. And this tidbit is the cherry on his hacktastic sundae.

The Vermont Press Bureau’s Josh O’Gorman did a writeup of the VTGOP chair’s latest stunt — the anti-carbon tax website, which seeks to blame Democrats for something that’s not going to happen.

And deep within the article, I discovered the source of Sunderland’s difficulty with facts.

David Sunderland (not exactly as illustrated)

David Sunderland (not exactly as illustrated)

He appears to live in an alternate dimension, with a parallel but very different set of events. Look:

Sunderland said he believes a carbon tax could be in the cards come January.

“It’s possible this will happen,” Sunderland said. “If you look to the past, nobody in million years would have ever thought we would enact state-run, single-payer health care, but it happened.”

Whaaaaaat?

Vermont has a state-run, single-payer health care system?

How did I miss that?

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Some good news arrives by a very circuitous route

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Here’s something you wouldn’t expect, based on all the continued carping about Vermont Health Connect. The Times Argus, Saturday edition:

Vt. Health Exchange Called the Best

And Seven Days:

GAO: Vermont’s Health Exchange More ‘Operational’ Than Others

The news comes from an audit of state health exchange IT systems conducted by the Government Accountability Office, and released on Wednesday. The Vermont rating was not highlighted by the GAO, but it was definitely there. A chart on page 38 of the 109-page report shows that Vermont had the best operational status of any state-run health exchange. In a measure of four categories, Vermont was judged “fully operational” in three, and “partially operational” in the other one.

The chart was first reported in the Connecticut Mirror, which highlighted Connecticut’s rating of “partially operational” in all four.

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Vermont Health Connect: a very conditional victory

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So the Governor and a full brace of minions came out Monday morning to announce that Vermont Health Connect had met the first of his two deadlines, or milestones, or benchmarks: the implementation of a change of circumstance feature.

This, after VHC was taken offline for the weekend to install upgrades, a move that prompted premature glee among reform opponents like State Rep. Heidi Scheuermann.

Yeah, not so much.

But the declaration of victory, though sounded loud and clear, came with a handful of asterisks. The Vermont Press Bureau’s Neal Goswami:

The upgrade, which is still being phased in by the administration, will allow customer service representatives to make changes to consumers’ accounts in an automated way.

“Still being phased in.” Got it. And…

“It means that we now have the capability, the tool, to be able to change your circumstance when things change for your insurance. And the outcome of that, as we get it up and running, will be a much smoother system that has been evading us since we launched,” Shumlin said.

“… as we get it up and running…” Hmm.

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Small business should beware of joining the corporate army

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A while back, I proposed that Vermont’s small retailers ought to open their own interest group. I suggested the Vermont Association of Independent Retailers, or VAIR for short.

The idea came to me while reading about their putative Montpelier representation, the Vermont Retail and Grocers Association, helmed by the very effective Jim Harrison. One of his favorite techniques is to bring some mom-and-pop types to the Statehouse whenever there’s legislation that might touch on retail interests, such as the proposed sugary-beverage tax.

Truth is, Harrison gives a lot of lip service to the little guy, but his real clients are in Big Retail — the WalMarts, Hannafords, and Dollar Generals of the world. And quite often, the interests of Big Retail are at odds with what’s best for small business. Guys like Harrison draw a stark divide between the private sector and government; in fact, the real divide is frequently found between big retail and small. I would ask this of real independent retailers: which is the biggest threat to your existience? A change in state regulations, or the big boxes and dollar stores springing up all over the place?

This is also true in the broader business world. And in that field, there’s a thousand-pound lobbying gorilla called the National Federation of Independent Businesses, or NFIB. Which has a Vermont branch, helmed by veteran corporate lobbyist Shawn Shouldice. (Who also, I can’t help but note, does PR for Bruce Lisman.)

The NFIB sounds like a joint effort of all the mom-and-pops. It bills itself as “the voice of small business.”

Well, it’s not.

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Shumlin Gets Ass Handed To Him

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Smile, though your heart is breaking...

Smile, though your heart is breaking…

The three top Democratic leaders stood shoulder-to-shoulder, smiled, and proclaimed their unity behind an agreement on taxes and health care. They praised each other and the Legislature for working hard and working together. “Everyone has given a little,” Governor Shumlin said.

Well, almost.

After a week of harsh rhetoric about how “Montpelier” (meaning his own party) had produced a tax plan that he “hated,” he accepted a slightly modified version with nothing more than a fig leaf of additional spending cuts.

After days of harsh rhetoric about how capping income tax deductions would be “a big mistake,” Shumlin accepted a deal with a slightly less restrictive cap than the Legislature had been poised to enact.

The legislature “has given a little.” Shumlin gave a LOT.

Which belies his extreme rhetoric about a plan that was very similar to the one he accepted today, and characterized as “fiscally responsible” and “ensur[ing] that we continue to grow this economy.”

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Well, there won’t be a veto.

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Lots of standing around and waiting at the Statehouse today. I just finished standing outside the Governor’s ceremonial office for about an hour, and my reward was to see the Big Three — Gov. Shumlin, House Speaker Shap Smith, and Senate President Pro Tem John Campbell come out and announce they’d reached a deal on the tax bill. And the Governor added that “There will be a health care bill.”

They wouldn’t release any details yet, but they did manage to close the remaining gap. And they all looked happy standing shoulder-to-shoulder, less than 24 hours after Shumlin’s tough talk on taxes seemed to portend a veto of his own party’s tax plan.

Well, that won’t happen. And I guess we shouldn’t be surprised. Rhetoric notwithstanding, there’s always a great deal of momentum toward deal-making at this stage. The unusual thing, really, was that the Governor’s plumage displays were aimed at fellow Democrats.

It’ll still be many hours before adjournment; the bills have to be drawn up, they have to clear the House and Senate, and there’ll need to be some suspending of the rules.

But at this point, it seems inevitable that the key bills will move and the Legislature will adjourn today.

Although the definition of “today” might get stretched a little.

The most important thing that happened this week

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… had nothing to do with the Legislature. Well, it had nothing to do with current legislative debates.

And it went uncovered by the media except for Nancy Remsen of Seven Days.

Four representatives of Optum, the contractor working with the state to fix Vermont Health Connect, told legislative leaders Thursday that they expect to deliver an automated change-of-circumstance function as of the May 31 deadline set by the Shumlin administration.

“We are confident we will make the deadline,” Matt Stearns, vice president of external communications, said in an interview after private sessions with legislators.

This is big, assuming Stearns’ confidence is warranted.

I spend a lot of time on the ins and outs of the legislative and political process. It’s fun, it’s dramatic, and it’s a minefield of slapstickery. But I know that most of it washes out in the end. With the probable exception of the Norm McAllister saga, the world will little note nor long remember what was done here. But Optum making the deadline would be truly impactful.

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