The danger facing Catamount is that the pool of participants is not large enough to provide enough income to the program. If only the sickest people are participating, then there will not be enough revenue to pay for their care. It's important that young, healthy people who do not require as much care participate so that the revenue that comes to the program from their premiums helps offset the costs that go to people with costly conditions.
Rutland Herald editorial page
Even the syntactical difficulties of that passage (the word "enough" twice in one sentence; "costs" and "costly" side-by-side in another) do not obscure the main point -- namely, that Catamount Health is a mess. This comes as no surprise since both the conceptual thinking and the fundamental economics of the program are flawed.
Consider another segment from the same editorial:
... legislators who crafted the law ... didn't want Catamount to be overwhelmed by people rushing to sign up for Catamount to get treatment for their expensive cases. Yet the purpose of Catamount is to provide treatment for those expensive cases.
Which, now that you mention it, does sound like something of a problem.
Of course, the goal to which all of Vermont's health care initiatives and reforms have been aiming is what the Herald calls a "comprehensive and inclusive system."
By law, the state cannot force people who are on Medicare, in IBM's health care system, or enjoy the benefits of one of the gold-plated plans negotiated by the teachers' union to enroll in a health care system it administers. And even if the law were no obstacle, does anyone believe that the teachers would agree to join a plan with benefits substantially inferior to those they now enjoy? Or that a "comprehensive and inclusive" state program could afford to offer such lavish benefits to everyone?
Before the state can even begin to get a handle on health care, the people who make policy and laws must ... well, get real. They could start here and follow the links.
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