Comment: Ask not for whom the Medicaid Expansion bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
“MONTPELIER — Gov. Peter Shumlin is looking to address a deficit in the state’s Medicaid program by expanding a tax on health care providers in the $1.5 billion 2017 fiscal year budget proposal he revealed Thursday.” [...]
“The biggest chunk of new revenue, under Shumlin’s proposal, would be raised by expanding an existing provider assessment to independent doctors who operate outside the umbrella of a hospital and to dentists. Shumlin also decried the loss of Vermont’s independent doctors.”
“Currently, only hospitals and the doctors they employ and nursing homes are subject to the 6 percent assessment. Shumlin’s plan expands the assessment to the additional health care providers at a lesser rate of 2.35 percent. The $17 million in new revenue would be matched by $20 million in federal funds.”
“That money will be used to help offset a $55 million shortfall in the Medicaid program. The state-federal program is in the red after it was expanded under the federal Affordable Care Act. About 200,000 Vermonters — one-third of the state — are now on some form of Medicaid.”
Shumlin targets provider assessments
By Neal P. Goswami
VERMONT PRESS BUREAU | January 22,2016