Below is an editorial published in the St. Albans Messenger, written by Editor Emeritus Emerson Lynne and reprinted here with permission. 

On the morning of Friday, Aug. 28, the Green Mountain Care Board [GMCB] will listen to the leadership of Northwestern Medical Center defend its request for a 19.9 percent rate increase. How the board responds could be an inflection point for NMC and its future as Franklin County’s community hospital.

Acknowledging that perception is the biggest part of reality, it’s crucial the GMCB recognize that while a 19.9 percent rate increase is a big headline, it’s not the story. The story is that NMC’s request is its effort to recoup part of what the GMCB has cost NMC by denying the hospital’s past rate hike requests, and, in 2016, ordering the hospital to actually cut its rates, which has had a compounding effect in the following years. The story is that NMC has always been one of Vermont’s lowest cost providers, and instead of being rewarded, it’s been punished. High cost hospitals have been allowed to keep their high prices, low priced hospitals have been kept low, and pushed toward the financial brink. And NMC is on the brink.

The proposed NMC budget makes this point with thundering clarity by looking at what other hospitals in Vermont charge for services and comparing themselves in a way easy for the GMCB to understand. This dollars and cents exercise shows that if the GMCB granted NMC its proposed increase NMC would still have a cost structure less than nine of the state’s 14 hospitals. Presently, only one hospital out of 14 has lower costs.