Committee introduces bill to let Green Mountain Care Board trim hospital reimbursements, appoint observers

The House Health Care Committee voted to introduce draft request 25-0975, draft 3.1, a committee bill that would expand the Green Mountain Care Board’s authority to adjust hospital reimbursement rates and to appoint an independent hospital observer.

Legislative counsel Jennifer Harvey told the committee the draft clarifies the solvency trigger the board may use and tightens the criteria for which hospitals could have rates reduced. “A regulatory action level event…which I believe is less than 150%,” Harvey said, referring to the risk-based capital threshold for domestic health insurers.

The bill would permit the board to order a reduction in an insurer’s reimbursement rates to one or more Vermont hospitals when the insurer faces an “acute and immediate threat to its solvency” tied to that regulatory action level event. Harvey said the committee made two related changes: raising one cash-on-hand threshold from 125 to 135 days and clarifying that the board may act…