Anya Rader Wallack denies that the “UVM Health Network has become an insurer.” It is, she says, merely in “a partnership with MVP … to provide a Medicare Advantage product to eligible people in our region that is informed by our doctors. We are part of MVP’s network of health care providers.”
How does that differ from being an insurer? What exactly is the role of the UVM Health Network in that partnership? Does it share profits made from the Medicare Advantage insurance policies that are the subject of the partnership? I sure can’t tell from Ms. Wallack’s commentary.
Nor can I tell from the initial UVM Health Network announcement of the partnership, which is a masterpiece of vagueness as to what the relationship between the UVM Health Network and MVP really is. The later announcement of an actual Medicare Advantage product doesn’t clarify the relationship at all.
If Ms. Wallack wants people to be more accurate in describing the relationship between the two entities, they — and she — should be more specific in their own descriptions of it.
It’s also worth pointing out that last year the University of Vermont Health Network hired Ms. Wallack as senior vice president for strategic communications, reportedly for a base salary of $400,000 a year. She is one of the many, many executives there that make hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.
Lodiza LePore
Bennington