This commentary is by Patrick Flood, former commissioner of the Department of Mental Health and the Department of Disabilities, Aging and Independent Living, and former deputy secretary of the Agency of Human Services. He is now retired and lives in Woodbury.
Recently there has been a lot of press coverage of a Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services report from the University of Chicago-NORC on Vermont’s all-payer model of health reform. State leaders called the results in the report “promising.”
The key finding in the report is that Vermont “saved” millions of dollars in Medicare spending. However, a careful reading of the report calls this conclusion into question. There are a few key questions about the report’s findings and a number of other concerns.