House advances H.766 with committee strike-all to third reading, citing reduced prior authorization burden

The Vermont House on the floor adopted a committee strike-all amendment to H.766, a bill intended to reduce administrative burdens on health care providers by aligning prior authorization and step-therapy rules with Medicaid practices and standardizing claims-editing processes. Representative Black (member from Essex), who presented the amendment, said the changes are designed to let clinicians make clinical determinations without undue payer interference.

Representative Black described the bill as touching multiple administrative pain points: clarifying that “it is the provider that should make the clinical decision that is in the best interest of their patient, not the payer,” aligning coding and claim-edit standards across payers to reduce duplicate work, limiting the release of new…