[“UVM Medical Center Is Losing $460,000 Every Day,” April 17, online] failed to mention the University of Vermont Medical Center’s $1 billion-plus in reserves. Did the reporter lack time to investigate how UVM Medical Center losses compare to the institution’s profits in the $1.5 billion range over the past three to five years?
VT Healthcare 911, an organization advocating for health care regulatory reform, has produced useful information about UVM Medical Center’s operation. The org’s website has a piece titled “Turning the Ship Around Is Possible,” which provides ample data and history that could have rounded out the Seven Days story.
UVM Medical Center responded to its cumulative losses from Medicare in the $365 million range by pushing up profits from commercial insurance payers. The vhc911.org website explains that UVM Medical Center systematically cost-shifted losses into profits extracted from Blue Cross Blue Shield health insurance payments, while Blue Cross Blue Shield did nothing to challenge hospital rates for services, and UVM Medical Center’s “commercial profits increased by over 500 percent between 2020 and 2024.” Commercial profits were used to support “growth of the Health Network’s centralized business operations and top-heavy management expenses and subsidized the losses at its New York hospitals” and accumulation of $1.5 billion in cash assets.
The additional information on this website will help everyone understand why employers and households are going broke from health care premiums. At the same time, House Speaker Jill Krowinski and House Health Care Committee chair Alyssa Black rejected requests to allocate funding in S.197 for a financing and operations study to initiate a universal primary care plan in Vermont.
Liz Curry
Burlington