For-Profit Health Care Gets Vermont Panel's Scrutiny

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Credit taxcredits.net

Vermont's Green Mountain Care Board is looking at what the effects might be on the state's health care system if hospitals and other providers switch from nonprofit to for-profit status.

The board, which is designing the single-payer health care system the state is hoping to set up by 2017, devoted a session Thursday afternoon to the subject of such conversions.

The issue comes up a year after Burlington-based Fletcher Allen Health Care sought — and then dropped the idea — to sell off its dialysis units to a for-profit New Hampshire company.

It also follows the announcement that Vermont's hospitals and the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, N.H., are joining to form a for-profit accountable care organization.

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