MONTPELIER — The federal government has
renewed an agreement with Vermont known as
Global Commitment to Health — a deal that will
be worth $4.26 billion over the next three years.
The partnership represented in the agreement
assures the federal government that it won’t
have to spend any more than $4.26 billion for
subsidized health care for low-income
Vermonters. The federal government will cover
about 58 percent of the cost of Vermont’s
Medicaid program up to the $4.26 billion cap.
What Vermont gets is greater flexibility in how it
uses federal dollars after it covers the required e
xpenses of the subsidized health insurance
program.
Under the original five-year Global Commitment
agreement, the state was able to invest in
programs such as tobacco cessation, electronic
medical record technology, chronic care and
school health — all areas outside the traditional
boundaries for Medicaid funding.
The state also covered 50,000 Vermonters with
health insurance who wouldn’t have been eligible
for Medicaid. In all, the state’s subsidized health
insurance programs serve 150,000 Vermonters.
Gov. Peter Shumlin’s administration and
legislative leaders cheered renewal of the
agreement as they began to wrestle with a $150
million budget shortfall and consider big changes
in health care.
"In the world of many unanswered questions,
having that resolved is very helpful," House
Health Care Committee Chairman Mark Larson,
D-Burlington, said Friday.
The first Global Commitment "waiver," as it is
known, expired at the end of September, but was
extended through December while state and
federal officials negotiated some technical
accounting changes.
Jim Giffin, chief financial officer for the Agency
of Human Services, said the new agreement
made few changes that would affect programs.
In fact, Giffin said, the state gained more
flexibility and won clarifications that assured, for
example, that federal dollars could help pay for
care provided to psychiatric patients in a
proposed 15-bed secure residential facility in
Waterbury.
"Global Commitment has worked well for
Vermont," said new Human Services Secretary
Doug Racine, "because we have greater
flexibility to spend in the Vermont way."
Contact Nancy Remsen at 578-5685 or
nremsen@bfp.burlingtonfree press.com