As Vermont's legislative session enters its final weeks, lawmakers in Montpelier are struggling to keep a promise to voters.
They are trying to find a way to provide residents with affordable health insurance.
Both the Senate and the House have plans that look to the state to establish coverage for those who don't have their own.
And the Governor thinks both plans will drive away business.
The Vermont Standard's Kevin Forrest reports.
(meeting sounds)
Folks gather for a late morning hearing on universal health care at a Montpelier church.
The Vermont Public Interest Research Group expected maybe 35 people.
As the meeting begins, over 80 crowd into the room.
(bring up speaker sounds)
Vermont politicians promised voters affordable health care last fall.
This winter, Rep. John Tracy of Burlington led a special health care committee.
The enormity of the mission quickly became obvious.
Tracy - Because it involves so much money and an entrenched system between hospitals and doctors and insurance companies, now you have pharmaceutical benefit managers and pharmaceutical manufacturers and health maintenance organizations. It?s so fragmented, and it?s so big, it?s a daunting task.
Many long winter days and nights produced a house plan that would phase in single-player, universal health coverage for all Vermonters by 2009.
It included government reorganization and cost-containment measures.
An initial study would figure how to redirect the estimated $350 million Vermont currently spends each year on health care toward the new plan.
House Republicans dismissed the plan as half-baked and socialistic.
It won favor, however, with people like Ellen Oxfeld of Middlebury.
Outside the Montpelier church, she urged Tracy to stick to his guns.
Oxfeld - And I urge you if you?re on the conference committee, hold firm to your bill. Send the senators back to do their homework because they have not done their homework like you guys did.
She?s referring to the Senate health care plan.
It is less ambitious but more concrete than the House bill.
It offers uninsured Vermonters coverage for primary and preventive care by 2006 and hospital coverage by 2009.
Funding comes from a payroll tax on employers who don?t already offer coverage.
Depending on whom you speak to, the senate plan is a sellout, a ticking economic time bomb, or a brilliant compromise.
Martha Abbott, chair of Vermont?s Progressive Party, praises the House plan as bold and innovative and just what Vermonters need.
She says the senate plan merely tries to placate Gov. Jim Douglas, who strongly opposes government-run health insurance.
Martha Abbott - If the governor wants to be the roadblock to Vermonters getting affordable health care, let him be that roadblock. Don?t have the Senate be the roadblock.
A conference committee will soon start crafting a compromise between the Democratic house and senate and the Republican governor.
All three factions profess a spirit of compromise.
But the tension is palpable.
Governor Douglas didn?t mince words at his weekly press conference.
Douglas - ?? I?m opposed to this economically destructive payroll tax proposal and the slippery slope toward the government-run, taxpayer-financed health care rationing that it creates.
Instead, the governor wants a plan that raises money by taxing health care premiums.
Senate President, Democrat Peter Welch seems to spend all his waking hours these days defending the senate plan.
He?s taking heat from both sides.
Progressives call it a sellout.
Republicans say it?s poisonous for business.
Welch argues the governor?s plan punishes those who are doing the right thing.
Welch - The payroll tax that we?re talking about mean that the Walmarts of Vermont would have to start contributing. And under the governor?s proposal, he would exempt Walmart, basically, and make the businesses that are already very generous in providing health care insurance, pay more.
Welch says that the crushing health insurance cost increases, not government meddling, pose the biggest threat to the economy.
Welch - And that?s my problem with the governor?s approach, he does not feel that urgency in getting our arms around the explosion in costs in health care and that?s what?s killing our business.
But the governor lists specific businesses that might leave Vermont if state-run health care is adopted.
Douglas - Employers all throughout Vermont are putting plans on hold pending the outcome of this debate. These employers have been clear. If the senate or the house bills pass, their future in Vermont is questionable.
The governor charges that the broad-based senate approach will hurt the most Vermonters.
Douglas - And think of those who will be taxed under this payroll tax scheme. It?s not the vast majority of Vermonters who have insurance through their employers. It?s those who don?t. It?s the small businesses, the mom and pop stores, the farmers, the barbers, the kids with summer jobs, the single working moms. It?s the working poor.
Welch says the governor is distorting the senate plan.
But he says he will put on his game face for the conference committee battles.
Welch - My attitude is keep talking, keep positive. This issue is too important to let it fall by the wayside and I?m not going to get into a battle of ultimatums.
Even Governor Douglas, who has hinted at a veto, dangles the hope of a possible compromise.
Douglas - There?s often a lot of posturing in conference committee where people stake out their positions for the drama of the television cameras but I hope that the senate president and the house speaker and I can talk and resolve some of these differences very expeditiously.
State Representative John Tracy says that if the house and senate can agree on a plan that gives Vermonters what they want, then the ball is in the governor?s court.
Tracy - Our plan has to make sense to the average Vermonter. And then he should say ?You know what? It makes sense, I?m going to do it.? It?s his choice to make.
The Vermont Legislature is already running late. .
Members will have to move quickly to produce a health care plan before the session ends in a few weeks.
For NHPR news, this Kevin Forrest.
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