Specifications include, but are not limited to: : The Green Mountain Care Board (GMCB) was created by the Vermont legislature in 2011 and is charged with ensuring that changes in the health system improve quality while stabilizing costs. The most unique thing about the GMCB is that the Legislature assigned it unprecedented responsibility for all the major factors influencing the cost of health care. This includes hospital budgets, health insurance rates, benefit decisions and major expenses, rates paid by insurance companies and Medicaid, and plans to ensure Vermont has enough of the right health professionals and uses health technology to decrease costs. While in other states responsibility for oversight of these different parts of the health system is split among different agencies, Vermonts Legislature created one Board to consider all the variables. The Board has focused on reviewing insurance rates, approving an insurance benefits package, regulating hospital budgets, and launching pilot projects that test different methods for paying for health care to improve quality and minimize costs. This work lays the groundwork for moving in a careful, deliberate way toward the broader goals of Act 48: to provide all Vermonters with health coverage, increase the quality of care, keep costs sustainable, cut the link between employment and health insurance, build a publicly financed health care system, and improve the health of Vermonters.
