Sen. Leddy and Vermont AARP
Team Up To Boost ‘Catamount’
By M. D. Drysdale

Vermont’s new subsidized Catamount Health Plan is "head and shoulders" above any other state’s solution to the crisis in health insurance, one of the legislative authors said in a recent visit to The Herald.

But, said Chittenden Co. Sen. Jim Leddy, Catamount’s promise won’t be fulfilled unless enough people sign up for it.

To that end, Sen. Leddy has hooked up with the Vermont branch of AARP (American Association of Retired Persons) to spread understanding of Catamount’s benefits.

AARP believes the Vermont plan is so significant that it has assigned several full-time workers to four outreach offices in the state to help implement it, said Dave Reville, AARP’s director of communications, who accompanied Sen. Leddy.

"One of AARP’s goals is to make Catamount work," he declared.

The Douglas administration and other organizations have also worked well together on the project, Leddy said.

Unlike Massachusetts, Vermont doesn’t require its citizens to purchase health insurance, Reville noted, but still, the system won’t work unless it’s widely used.

People who haven’t purchased health insurance in the past have to be assured that "all of a sudden it’s changed," he said. "All of a sudden it’s available."

Catamount policies cost as little as $60 a month per person if there are five people in a household with a total household income less than $4142 a month, for instance. Subsidies are available for five-person households with income up to $6213 a month ($74,556 a year).

Leddy and Reville urged anyone wanting more information for themselves to contact AARPVermont at aarp.org/VT or to contact Green Mountain Care, which administers the program. Green Mountain Care can do an individual screening right over the phone to see if the person is eligible and at what level, they said.

Meanwhile, civic organizations may obtain speakers to explain the new health plan. Call Peter Sterling at 279-6840 to obtain the contacts.

Nat’l Change Needed

Vermont’s plan is particularly good because of its focus on quality, Leddy said, including the adoption of some of the features of Gov. Douglas’s "Blueprint for Health," which focuses on chronic diseases. It also will lead to the adoption of better record sharing through the kinds of technology adopted recently by Gifford Medical Center, he said.

(Sen. Leddy admitted to a fondness for Randolph based on a year he spent here as a young man. He was training to become a Catholic priest at the time and spent a year under the tutelage of the Paraclete Fathers, a Catholic order which at that time owned the Chandler Mari-Castle on South Main Street.)

Leddy was emphatic, however, that even Vermont’s plan will not succeed "unless we see change on a national level" including within Medicaid and Medicare.

Access to health care in the U.S. is "a national embarrassment," he charged. To that end he has joined an AARP effort called "Divided We Fail." The campaign asks American citizens to sign a pledge. The pledge says that political candidates must have a program to ensure health care access to all.

"We want to impress on all candidates the cry from our (AARP) membership that a better health care system is absolutely the paramount issue on the domestic agenda," Reville said.

Some 1600 Vermonters have signed the pledge so far.