By DANIEL BARLOW Vermont Press Bureau
MONTPELIER – A single-payer health care advocate filed a complaint with the Attorney General Monday contesting the appointment of a consultant to the state’s Health Care Reform Commission.
Dr. Deb Richter of Montpelier said that James Leddy, a former Vermont senator, should not serve on the legislative committee because he has ties to the insurance industry via his role as volunteer president of the state’s AARP chapter.
Richter, one of the founders of the group Vermont Health Care For All, said that a new state law specifically requires that members of the Health Care Reform Commission not have financial ties to the health care industry.
"Jim has been a great public servant," Richter said. "That’s not the issue. The issue is that he has ties to the insurance industry."
Richter’s complaint, filed Monday with Attorney General William Sorrell’s office, prompted a strong rebuke from officials within the Vermont chapter of the AARP. Greg Marchildon, the executive director of the organization, called Richter’s accusation "shockingly astounding."
"AARP is not an insurance company," Marchildon said. "We don’t write insurance policies."
Lawmakers in Montpelier this year passed a bill called S.88. Among a host of health care tweaks it contained was a provision, championed by Sen. Doug Racine, D-Chittenden, a gubernatorial candidate, to hire a consultant to fully design three new health care models for Vermont.
That consultant will be hired later this month by the Health Care Reform Commission, a panel of House and Senate lawmakers and several Vermont citizens. Late last week, lawmakers announced that Leddy and Con Hogan, a former secretary of the Vermont Agency of Human Services, would be appointed new members.
Richter’s complaint centers on a part of the law that states that the non-voting, citizen members of the Health Care Reform Commission shall not "be in the employ of or holding any official relation to any health care provider or insurer or be engaged in the management of a health care provider or insurer …"
In her complaint, Richter asks the attorney general to order House Speaker Shap Smith to remove Leddy as a member of the commission and appoint a new member.
"The law is pretty clear," Richter said Monday afternoon. "If we start bending the law right now, what does that say about the rest of the process?"
AARP does offer a range of insurance products to its members. But Marchildon said those are products created by insurance companies and offered to members through a separate AARP organization, called AARP Services Inc.
He said AARP Services Inc. has "its own CEO and its own board of directors." Leddy’s role is strictly with AARP of Vermont, he said, and he receives no compensation for that volunteer position outside of the occasional travel reimbursement.
"No volunteer gets paid a dime," Marchildon said.
Richter, a supporter of a single-payer health care system (one of the models designed by the commission will be a single-payer system), said her complaint has nothing to do with Leddy personally, a man she says she respects.
"He has done amazing work for Vermont," she said. "This has nothing to do with him."
But Marchildon said Richter’s complaint made him angry. He pointed out that she worked to defeat S.88 earlier this year during the legislative session because she disagreed with part of the bill that allows the attorney general to track free drug samples given to doctors.
"She is not interested in progress," he said. "The sum of her accomplishments is to divide people and get in the way of progress."
daniel.barlow@timesargus.com