BURLINGTON, Vt. (WCAX) – The Green Mountain Care Board has approved a nearly $3.7 billion budget for hospital spending next year.
802 Podcast Host Mark Johnson spoke with UVM Medical Center COO Steven Leffler to find out whether Vermont can afford the increasing costs of health care.
“Expenses are increasing pretty quickly for health care. If you look at the cost of labor, which is 60% of our budget, it’s going up. We want to pay fair and competitive wages. Pharmaceuticals really increasing rapidly. There’s some miracle drugs out there, but they’re very expensive. And so and space. We talked about this already. A lot of the hospitals in Vermont are old and have done a lot of deferred maintenance because their budgets are tight,” Leffler said.
Johnson told our Katharine Huntley more about his discussion with Leffler. Watch the video to see their full conversation.
You can find the 802 News Podcast on the WCAX website or wherever you like to get your podcasts.