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State Rep. Paige updates Newport on health-care bills, campaign finance proposal and lake designation request
Summary
Representative Paige told Newport residents his committee has handled about 40 health-care bills (three advanced), described bills on campaign finance (H116), municipal ordinances (H109 impacting downtown Newport) and a request to designate Lake Memphremagog 'in crisis' (H113), and warned rural hospitals remain vulnerable.
At the March 3 public information session, Representative Paige gave a state-house update focused on health care, campaign finance and local environmental concerns.
Paige said his committee has about 40 bills assigned and has advanced three, including measures to unmerge insurance markets to reduce premiums for qualifying people and to raise certificate-of-need thresholds for hospitals and health centers (he said the threshold was raised to about $10,000,000). He described constraints on health-insurance claims standards for services delivered out of state unless previously coordinated.
He named bills he has submitted, including H116 on campaign-finance limits and H109, an act concerning municipal ordinances that "governs the maintenance of premises within our downtown district" and is intended as an additional tool for cities including Newport. He said he also filed H113 seeking designation of Lake Memphremagog as a "lake in crisis" because of invasive species and to make the lake eligible for additional federal cleanup funds; he asked that the statutory criterion requiring property-value decline be removed because, in his view, that criterion would never be met on that lake.
On hospitals, Paige referenced the Owens Wyman report and said, "our hospitals are not out of the woods yet," noting more legislation may be coming and that the Green Mountain Care Board could receive additional powers. He also described a joint resolution (House joint resolution number 2) urging President Trump not to impose tariffs on Canadian goods; he said it had bipartisan support from Northeast Kingdom legislators.
Paige concluded by encouraging residents to keep attention on local hospital stability and other state actions; he then took questions from the public about the status of North Country Hospital's dialysis services and cutbacks in rural facilities.
Next steps: The bills mentioned are at different stages in the legislative process; the items Paige described would require committee and legislative action at the state level.
