Welch puts weight into health care bill
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U.S. Rep. Peter Welch, right, addresses a gathering of consumer, labor and business leaders at the Plainfield Health Center on Thursday in support of revamping the nation's health care system. Jeb Wallace-Brodeur/Times Argus |
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By Louis Porter VERMONT PRESS BUREAU - Published: July 3, 2009
PLAINFIELD — U.S. Rep. Peter Welch is facing the same choice in Washington, D.C., as he did in Montpelier — whether to support a health care plan that will almost certainly fall short of the broader reform he favors.
Welch, a member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee that is playing a central part in health care legislation on Capitol Hill, said Thursday that he will support a bill that includes a public insurance option. Although he prefers a single-payer system, there are simply not the votes to get it through Congress, Welch said.
Several years ago, when Welch was the Senate President Pro Tem in Vermont, he was central to the work that ended in a compromise with Gov. James Douglas and established the Catamount Health insurance program. Among other things, Catamount expanded the Blueprint for Health, a prevention program for improving health care – and lowering costs — by changing how care is managed and paid for.
At the time Welch and Douglas were negotiating Catamount, some in Vermont wanted a single payer system, while others did not want the state any more deeply involved in health insurance than it was.
Accepting the compromise was the right decision, and some elements of that Blueprint program have been incorporated into the U.S. House health care reform bills, Welch said.
The congressman traveled to the Health Center in Plainfield to discuss the federal legislation.
Paul Burns of the Vermont Public Interest Research Group joined Welch, and agreed that advocates should take what they can get as long as the bill includes the creation of a public option for securing health coverage.
"This is our time," he said. "This is the time, finally, for the federal government to reform health care."
The Vermont program can and should be improved, but the state has seen some real benefits and is substantially ahead of the rest of the country in cost and quality of care, Welch said.
Not everyone is convinced the Catamount Health system and its associated programs can work in the long-term, despite the fact that it has expanded coverage to more Vermonters. There is also no widespread conviction that Congress will enact significant changes.
"I am convinced that states cannot do significant health care reform by taking an incremental approach," said Vermont Senate President Pro Tem Peter Shumlin, who currently holds Welch's old position. "Programs like that are not sustainable and do not solve the problem for employers and the underinsured, which is most of us."
"Most states do not have an enlightened a congressional delegation as Vermont does. My guess is that Congress will give in to the moneyed interests and fail to undertake a significant public plan," Shumlin added. There is some hope that a proposal championed by Vermont U.S. Sen. Bernard Sanders — to start a series of pilot health care programs in several diverse states — could succeed, Shumlin said.
"Vermont is ideally positioned to be the small, rural state" in that plan, he said.
The country faces a health care system that is "simply not sustainable" Welch said. But even getting a reform plan that guarantees certain rights to those with insurance and that includes a public insurance option will not be easy, he added.
"It is going to be very tough," Welch said.
Welch brought Susan Reid of Montpelier with him to The Health Center on Thursday. Like many Americans, Reid thought she had good health insurance — until she needed it.
In February she fell on the ice and broke her wrist.
"It was well and truly busted," Reid said.
Because her $330-a-month insurance plan had a $10,000 deductible and she needed surgery, she would have faced paying that much for the broken wrist if she had not qualified for Medicare, which limited how much could be charged, Reid said.
Some of the stories his committee has heard are much worse, Welch said.
Contact Louis Porter at louis.porter@timesargus.com.
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