S.190 seeks to enhance state oversight of healthcare costs and improve financial transparency within Vermont’s hospital system, healthcare reform, hospital budget regulation, and consumer protection.

It was a busy week keeping tabs on the pre-crossover sprint. Vermont's school performance took center stage in Senate Finance's joint hearing on the annual state report card (based on the ESSA accountability dashboard), where Education Secretary Zoie Saunders revealed the stark underperformance in Vermont's schools: no english grades surpassed 60% proficiency, math rarely topped 50%, science ranged in the low 40s, and over half of schools were "not meeting" expectations or declining. Equity gaps widened dramatically with designations nearly doubling for students with disabilities, low-income kids, and English learners. These results prompted the Agency of Education reorganization and initiatives like READ Vermont (Act 139 literacy), COUNT on Vermont (math), and Act 73 graduation standards aim to reverse trends.

The legislative gears are grinding towards crossover, with committees balancing ambitious reforms against practical fiscal and rural realities. This week the House Education Committee grappled with how to move forward on education reform. The Committee appears deeply divided and was looking for solutions to break a stalemate. It was perfect timing for our testimony on Friday. Our research on the efficiencies of replacing supervisory unions with CTE-based Education Service Agencies, we believe, will help inform the Committee's deliberations, by leveraging regional models to capture administrative savings without top-down mandates or the need to buy out collective bargaining agreements.

It was a busy week here at Campaign for Vermont. We testified in two different legislative committees this week and interviewed on a popular NEK TV show. Our hard work is paying off, we are getting positive indicators from legislators on multiple fronts!

This week, Vermont's legislative focus was largely on housing, education, and health care. The Senate Economic Development Committee advanced a task force proposal to inventory business resources and tackle gaps in access to capital, evolving from last week's broader housing finance pilot programs toward a comprehensive and inclusive economic ecosystem. The task force would include stakeholders like the Vermont Futures Project, the Vermont Small Business Development Center, and Professionals of Color, signaling an emerging pattern of nonpartisan collaboration to address rural-urban economic divides.

This week in Montpelier, education governance reform took center stage, with Act 73 discussions evolving from high-level overviews last week to concrete proposals on district consolidation, shared services, and regional structures. This signals a shift toward mandatory regionalized service (or consolidation) to address equity and costs, though voluntary options and rural safeguards remain hotly debated. We weighed in early in the week with the letter to the House Education Committee, urging them to challenge assumptions similar to those that derailed Act 46 (the previous consolidation effort). We followed later in the week with testimony in the Senate Finance Committee about our report identifying $300 million in potential savings by consolidating Supervisory Unions (instead of districts) and taking advantage of shared services.

H.577 would create a statewide Vermont Prescription Drug Discount Card Program, administered by the State Treasurer, to pool Vermont’s prescription drug purchasing power with other states. The goal is to negotiate lower prices on medications for all Vermonters. The bill sets up the legal authority for joining multi-state purchasing/discount arrangements, allows modest fees to sustain the program, establishes a dedicated fund, and provides start-up money and reporting requirements so lawmakers can monitor implementation, costs, and savings over time.

Long-Held Beliefs About Healthcare Costs Don’t Hold Up 

As Stat readers know, Vermont has the highest commercial insurance rates in the nation. We can credit a prolonged period of poor oversight, lax accountability, price gouging, and asset hoarding by some hospitals for much of this crisis. 

Adding to that, the state’s largest insurer, BCBSVT failed to negotiate aggressively with the UVMHN over prices. According to BCBS-VT, UVMHN had taken the position that if their rate demands were not met, they would stop seeing BCBSVT patients. 

All in all, leaders and regulators failed to focus on costs and Vermonters are left paying the bill. 

We leaned into our core strengths in 2025: providing clear, data-driven, nonpartisan analysis at a time when Vermonters are hungry for practical solutions. Our mission remains the same, to reconnect middle-class Vermonters to their government and champion policies that support family-sustaining jobs, environmental stewardship, and social responsibility. But this year, our work took a sharper edge in three key areas: transforming education, defending ethics and government accountability, and confronting Vermont’s long-term economic and demographic challenges.

Vermonters have always valued education as the cornerstone of our communities—places where children learn not just facts, but the grit that comes with rural life and the kindness to lend a hand to a neighbor. I remember my own school days: lessons in reading, arithmetic, as well as those that went beyond the textbooks. Vermont education has worked for generations because it was accountable—to parents, to townsfolk, to the shared stake we all hold in our kids' futures.

Today, that foundation feels unsteady. Our public schools remain vital to our towns, yet they're caught in a troubling bind: declining student outcomes amid escalating costs that strain budgets and drive families out of our state. Enrollment has dropped 20% over the past two decades, leaving echoing hallways and underutilized resources, while education spending tops $2.4 billion annually; more per pupil than nearly every other state. All the while, students are struggling to achieve the same outcomes they did just a decade ago.