I thank the VTDigger for the article on the Green Mountain Care Board: “10 years after it was created, has the Green Mountain Care Board worked?” To me, the answer is yes; it has worked and well.
The proof here is the letter Mr. John Brumsted, CEO of the UVM Health Network, sent the Green Mountain Care Board on Sept. 23, 2019, accusing the board of “decisions that will harm Vermont’s patients and hospitals.”
I feel no sympathy for Mr. Brumsted. How many millions does he take home a year? How top-heavy is the UVM Health Network payroll, especially now that he has bought two more prominent figures in Vermont’s health care world at hefty six-figure salaries? It was not these high-priced CEOs who got us through Covid, but the courage of the frontline staff. One of the great missed opportunities so far of the Green Mountain Care Board is that it has not regulated executive compensation.
Without the board regulating hospitals and insurance companies (OneCare is another story, outside the purview of this letter) our health care debacle would be far worse. The board stands between the average Vermonter, like me, lucky enough to get a 25-cent raise a year, $10 more a week, and the rapacious demands of a perverted system that is sucking money out of us at around 10% or more increases annually.
This will not change until we have the courage to make health care a right and not an industrial commodity.
Walter Carpenter
Montpelier
Member, Green Mountain Care Board advisory committee