S0126 enacts comprehensive healthcare payment and delivery-system reform. This legislation appropriates millions in taxpayer dollars for new bureaucratic positions and hospital incentive grants, and creates the Health Care Delivery Advisory Committee and Vermont Steering Committee for Comprehensive Primary Health Care. It mandates the Green Mountain Care Board to implement reference-based pricing as a cap on hospital payments, which limits the maximum reimbursement hospitals may accept for services. Additionally, it mandates global hospital budgets for all Vermont hospitals, and requires development of a Statewide Health Care Delivery Strategic Plan, and increases government oversight of hospital networks.

The Vermont House of Representatives passed S0126 on May 21, 2025 by a vote of 99 to 38. We have assigned pluses to the nays because this legislation expands government control over healthcare in Vermont. By imposing price controls, global budgets, new bureaucracies, centralized planning, and expanded data collection, the bill replaces free-market principles with socialism. This reduces healthcare freedom, increases long-term costs to taxpayers and patients, and moves the state further toward socialized medicine completely controlled by the state. Affordable and high-quality healthcare is achieved through competition, individual choice, personal responsibility, and limited government.