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In The News is a concise digest of health care news in Vermont and the nation. VMS is not responsible for the content of the articles.
VERMONT NEWS
VALLEY NEWS: Health Care Prognosis: Uncertainty
The victory of Donald Trump, who pledged to repeal President Obama’s signature health care reform law, seems likely to lead to major changes in how the federal government finances and regulates health care. Such changes would put in place a new framework for health care policy in Vermont, where reform has been a long-standing priority for officials and activists, and in New Hampshire, where fiscal restraint generally sets the limits of debate. But nobody seems to know yet just what that framework will look like. More »
VTDIGGER: Robin Lunge appointed to Green mountain Care Board
Gov. Peter Shumlin has appointed his director of health care reform to an open seat on the Green Mountain Care Board. He announced Robin Lunge’s appointment Wednesday in a news release. Lunge is taking the seat that Dr. Allan Ramsay, a founding member of the regulatory board, left Sept. 30. More »
VTDIGGER: Trump’s Obamacare repeal plan predicted to hurt Vermont
President-elect Donald Trump campaigned on repealing the Affordable Care Act in his first 100 days in office and replacing it with health savings accounts and a system allowing insurance companies to sell policies across state lines. But within hours of his election, Trump dialed back that pledge, according to the Washington Post. The president-elect said he would keep a clause in the law allowing people up to the age of 26 to get insurance through family policies and would retain a provision that requires insurers to provide policies to people with pre-existing conditions. More »
VPR: Vermont Lawmakers Will Push To Legalize Pot, Against Gov.-Elect Scott's Urging
Two key lawmakers say they plan to resume the push to legalize cannabis in Vermont, but Governor-elect Phil Scott is urging them not to waste their time on the measure. In the 2016 legislative session, Vermont had a governor who wanted to legalize cannabis, and a Legislature that wasn’t ready to come along. Now, it looks like lawmakers might be ready to move ahead with a legalization bill in 2017. More »
VTDIGGER: Vermont to lose funding source for psychiatric hospital
The state has been told it must quit using millions in Medicaid money to fund certain psychiatric hospitals, substance abuse centers, information technology projects and education programs. The federal government is restricting the use of money on certain initiatives as part of the agreement renewed in October called the global commitment waiver that gives Vermont a big pot of Medicaid money to spend in many different ways. The biggest impact will be on psychiatric services. Within five years, the state will be required to start switching to other ways to pay for psychiatric treatment at the Vermont Psychiatric Care Hospital in Berlin and the Brattleboro Retreat. More »
FREE PRESS: Burlington health center CEO 'blindsided' by firing
The former CEO of Community Health Centers of Burlington says he was "blindsided" by his firing last month, and the damage to his reputation is so severe he will have to leave Vermont to find work. Three executives Robinson hired during his tenure as CEO from June to October also were fired by the health center. More »
NATIONAL NEWS
WASHINGTON POST: Landmark report by Surgeon General calls drug crisis ‘a moral test for America.’
A landmark report released Thursday by U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy places drug and alcohol addiction alongside smoking, AIDS and other public health crises of the past half-century, calling the current epidemic “a moral test for America.” More »
POLITICO: Republicans aim to start Obamacare repeal in January
Republicans on Capitol Hill are growing confident that they can begin to repeal Obamacare once President-elect Donald Trump is sworn in, along with a pledge to replace it later. More »
NY TIMES: Why Keeping Only the Popular Parts of Obamacare Won’t Work
Before Obamacare, it could be hard to buy your own insurance if you’d already had a health problem like cancer. An insurance company might have decided not to sell any insurance to someone like you. It might have agreed to cover you, but not cover cancer care. Or it might have offered you a comprehensive policy, but at some incredibly high price that you could never have paid. Donald J. Trump says he wants to do away with much of Obamacare, but he has signaled that parts of the law that banned those practices are good policy he’d want to keep. More »
WASHINGTON POST: First-year doctors would be allowed to work 24-hour shifts under new rules
The organization that oversees the training of young doctors recommended Friday that first-year physicians in hospitals be allowed to work 24-hour shifts — eight hours longer than they are permitted now. If approved in February, the proposal by a task force of the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education would go into effect in July, when the members of the next class of medical school graduates begin their residencies at teaching hospitals across the United States. More »
MODERN HEALTHCARE: Medical schools tackle primary-care shortages
Not long after Keeley Hobart started medical school at Texas Tech University in 2011, she joined a federally funded program that allowed her to finish school one year early and receive a scholarship equal to a full year of tuition. The caveat: the program's curriculum focused exclusively on preparing medical students to become family physicians, one of the lowest-paid specialties in medicine. More »
COLORADOAN: Colorado becomes 5th state to OK 'aid in dying.'
Colorado on Tuesday overwhelmingly approved a proposition to allow terminally ill people to end their own lives, becoming the fifth state to allow medically assisted suicide. More »
NY TIMES: U.S. Enforcing Insurance Law to Help Fight Opioid Abuse
In one of President Obama’s last major health care initiatives, the administration is stepping up enforcement of laws that require equal insurance coverage for mental and physical illnesses, a move officials say will help combat an opioid overdose epidemic. More »
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