Office of Primary Care and Area Health Education Centers (AHEC) Program

Stephen Leffler, M.D.’90, president and chief operating officer of the UVM Medical Center and professor of emergency medicine at the Larner College of Medicine

(SEPTEMBER 16, 2024) Stephen Leffler, M.D.’90, president and chief operating officer of the UVM Medical Center and professor of emergency medicine at the Larner College of Medicine, spoke with WCAX-TV about the increasing costs of health care in Vermont.

The Green Mountain Care Board has approved a nearly $3.7 billion budget for hospital spending next year—but can Vermont afford the increasing costs of health care?

“Expenses are increasing pretty quickly for health care,” Leffler said. “If you look at the cost of labor, which is 60 percent 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 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.”