Vermont Moving Forward With Its Own Flavor of Health Reform

Vermont lawmakers are taking steps to move the state toward a publicly-financed insurance program and craft a state health exchange, which is required by the 2010 federal health law and which state officials hope to use as the groundwork for their eventual move to a unique single-payer system.

Gov. Peter Shumlin’s administration this week offered a bill to the legislature that lays out a plan for building the exchange, a type of marketplace for individuals and small groups to buy health insurance. The proposal would combine the small group and individual health insurance markets, would bar the sale of health insurance to individuals and small employers outside of the exchange and would define a small employer to be 100 employees or fewer instead of 50, which had been under consideration. The bill also seeks to clarify how the state should integrate Medicaid, the state-federal health program for the poor and disabled, into the exchange...