Home health care workers in Vermont could see more money in their paychecks due to a proposed federal rule change that would prevent unions from skimming funds from state-subsidized home health care workers’ pay.
Vermont authorities and lawmakers (from both parties) are using sticks such as Act 131, AHP emergency rules and the newly enacted individual mandate to prevent us from escaping the state’s failing insurance exchange in search of carrots elsewhere.
We found that premium increases for Obamacare policies were attributable to a maze of new federal insurance mandates, combined with a flawed subsidy design. That unhappy concoction produced disproportionately older and less healthy insurance pools, requiring insurers to price policies higher.
A twice-a-decade assessment by the Vermont Department of Health alleges that Vermonters’ access to quality health care varies according to race, LGBT status, ethnicity, gender, economic status and more.
Doubling down on demanding drug prices emboldens politicians to claim that they are tackling high prescription drug costs. In truth, it amounts to little more than posturing. Drug price transparency information does not measure value to the patient.
Don’t we have the right to make our own life decisions? Montpelier says no. Our political class finds the clarion call of collective responsibility more seductive than personal liberty.
In February, Texas and several other states filed a lawsuit alleging that, by reducing the Obamacare tax to zero, Congress eliminated the only basis on which the Supreme Court had upheld the constitutionality of Obamacare. A sine qua non of a tax is that it generates revenue, Texas argued, and Obamacare will no longer do so.
The premium effects of individual mandate repeal and new rules governing short-term insurance are smaller and more varied than the CAP study suggests. Some people will see premiums somewhat higher than they otherwise would be, but others will pay less for insurance.
While Vermont made an early, pioneering bid to make health-care costs more transparent, via its VHCURES and Health Care Price Transparency database, how has it fared in the wake of Colorado’s big leap forward in transparency this year?
Who are the healthy? Primarily our young people. And why must they be forced, on pain of penalties, to buy what for them is seriously overpriced health insurance? Because our state government doesn’t want to have to raise tax dollars to subsidize the far higher premiums of older and sicker people.
Gov. Phil Scott promised not to raise new taxes or fees, especially for young Vermonters, but a new law requiring Vermonters to carry health insurance is set to impose new penalties on many residents of the state.