Help is coming for two important segments of Vermont’s budget, thanks to a funding bill approved Tuesday by the U.S. House giving states more Medicaid and education money. The measure was approved in a session that brought lawmakers back to Washington D.C. in what is normally campaign season and it now heads to President Barack Obama for his signature. It will mean roughly $37 million for Vermont in expanded Medicaid money and another $19 million for education spending in the state.

The Plainfield Health Center will open the doors today to a newly expanded dental clinic that is expected to serve an additional 1,000 patients annually. The stimulus-funded expansion will offer lower-income residents in central Vermont increased availability to scare dental resources, Sen. Bernard Sanders said Tuesday. The grand opening in Plainfield on Wednesday, he said, is part of a broader initiative to improve dental care statewide. “When we talk about health care, we too often ignore dental care,” Sanders said. “And lack of access to dental care is a huge problem in this country and a very serious problem in Vermont.”

Vermont ranked third in the nation in an annual survey on children's well-being, with Windham County showing mixed results in most categories compared to the state averages. The Annie E. Casey Foundation released its annual report Tuesday comparing how states across the nation are serving children. In the 50-state ranking, only New Hampshire and Minnesota did a better job than Vermont caring for children and families in 2008, the year the authors used to generate this year's report.

The state's landmark Catamount health insurance program is not terminally ill, but it needs a checkup. A smaller-than-expected infusion of federal money and other factors mean the nearly four-year-old program needs help – about $3.8 million – from the state's General Fund to stay afloat this fiscal year, sooner than expected. The goal of having 96 percent of Vermonters insured by the end of 2010 seems unlikely to be met. About 7.6 percent lack health insurance now.

Technological improvements at the state's largest hospital have led to the elimination of 30 medical transcription jobs.Medical transcriptionists type and edit the notes dictated by health care providers for a patient's medical record. New speech-recognition software, which transcribes lines of dictation that only require editing, was introduced last fall. Fletcher Allen also implemented an electronic health record system last summer, which allows physicians to enter information directly into the system without dictation; this technology has decreased the overall volume of transcription work by 27 percent.

Dartmouth College is getting $35 million to open a center it hopes will help the nation take the next big steps in health care reform: improving quality while lowering costs. The historic health care overhaul legislation President Barack Obama signed in March will give millions of Americans access to health care, but "the real rocket science in health care right now is in the delivery," said Dartmouth President Jim Yong Kim, who has been promoting the idea of a national institute on health care delivery since arriving at Dartmouth last July.

Singing, music, dancing and theater kept a health care rally in Montpelier festive Saturday, but the hundreds of people who took part were trying to hammer home a message they couldn't take more seriously. The rally was part of the "Health Care is a Human Right" campaign that the Vermont Workers' Center launched in 2008 to try to change what is politically possible for health care reform. The rally Saturday was both a celebration of the group's accomplishments and an effort to make sure the health care bill pending in the Legislature is the strongest it can be, according to a news release from the workers' center.

Governor Jim Douglas says Vermonters should detail health care decisions they might want made should they become incapacitated. Douglas joined Cindy Bruzzese of the Vermont Ethics Network in urging Vermonters to fill out a form on the state Health Department's web site. Advance directives are used when decisions need to be made about health care for someone who's unconscious or otherwise incapable of taking part in the decision-making. Nearly 8,000 Vermonters have signed up for the registry since its creation in 2007.

More than a dozen organizations -- many made up of health-care professionals -- want the Senate to reject a House proposal to charge the state's 6 percent sales tax on dietary supplements such as vitamins. "Taxing dietary supplements is contrary to good public health policy," said Dolly Fleming, representing the Council of Vermont Elders. "Many seniors are encouraged to take certain vitamins and supplements."Vitamins also are important to women who are pregnant or breastfeeding, said Jill Krowinski, director of communications for Planned Parenthood of Northern New England. "The vitamin tax is a step backward in making health care more affordable," she said.

The federal health care bill that became law in March will cost Vermont $6.8 million over the next two years, state officials said. The biggest hit will come from the state's no longer receiving rebates for covering Medicaid prescription drugs. Other costs come from not being allowed to raise premiums on the state's Catamount Health Plan and covering children of state workers who remain on their parents' insurance up to age 26, as the new federal legislation allows. "It's $6.8 million in unanticipated costs in the General Fund," Administration Secretary Neale Lunderville said.

Sen. Bernie Sanders told the representatives of community health centers gathered in the conference room of his Burlington office Monday that they could have a “profound impact” on health care, not only in Vermont, but the nation. Vermont’s eight centers serve 108,000 Vermonters with primary, dental and mental health care — the highest penetration per capita in the country, Sanders said. Under the new national health reform act, federally qualified health centers will benefit from an injection of $12.5 billion over the next five years to help expand the access they offer to basic medical care from 20 million Americans to 40 million.

Senators voted 28-2 Wednesday to hire consultants to design a new health care model for Vermont, one of which would include a single-payer system. Approval of the bill is a victory for Sen. Doug Racine, D-Chittenden, the chair of the Senate Health and Welfare Committee, who made it his goal this year to set Vermont on a path to a new health care system. Racine, a gubernatorial candidate, said the state's health care spending is on an unsustainable path and is now expected to hit almost $6 billion by the year 2012. His proposal would fully design several new options for the state.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) today announced the first installment of funding to the Vermont State Health Insurance Assistance Program (SHIP) to help Medicare beneficiaries in Vermont get more information about their health care choices. The Vermont State Health Insurance Assistance Program will receive $269,120, part of the nearly $41.6 million being distributed to SHIPs today as part of the total $45 million that is available to SHIPs in 2010 for direct grants and support contracts. CMS expects the SHIPs to use the FY 2010 funding to provide one-on-one counseling and conduct targeted community-based outreach to an increasing number and diversity of beneficiaries who may be unable to access other sources of information.

The Vermont Health Department says the state had one of the highest rates of swine flu vaccination in the country. The Health Department says Vermont had the second highest rate in the country for both children aged six months to 17 years and adults aged 25 to 64. The state says 72 percent of children were vaccinated and 42 people of people in the older age group.

As proponents of health care reform hail an historic legislative victory, some Vermont companies that sell medical devices are disquieted by a new excise tax on medical products included in the sweeping changes. A 2.3 percent excise tax on medical devices included in the law -- set to take effect in 2013 -- aims to raise $20 billion over 10 years to help pay for the numerous reforms debated in Congress for more than a year. The tax will impact an array of medical products.