Editorials and Op-Eds
Single-payer is only real solution
February 16, 2012
Rutland HeraldThere has been a lot of discussion about the new health care exchange – about “bronze,” “silver” and “platinum” plans. Vermont is required by federal law to implement the exchange in 2014. How can Vermont’s Legislature best configure the exchange? Many people are wondering what this all means for them.Let’s remember that the exchange is just about a format to purchase private insurance. It is not the same as the single-payer sys...
Single-payer health care will increase choice in Vermont
February 02, 2012
My Turn: Burlington Free PressOpponents of Vermont’s new single payer health law are fear- mongering about the supposed conse¬quences of lack of “robust choice” in the health insurance marketplace. What they ignore is that health care doesn’t work like other “products.” It is better seen as a public good, like electricity. A publicly financed, single-payer system will actually give us more choice. • Right now, employers have little choice of affordabl...
Medicare for All Too Simple A Solution?
January 15, 2012
Burlington Free Press By Beach Conger Hardly a week goes by these days without someone asking me what I think about 'all this health care stuff' as they call it, lumping together into one wad, ObamaCare, Green Mountain Health Care, and their own particular plot of the health insurance swamp. They don't really want to know what I think, of course. Even though I am their doctor, which I realize full well. I am no fool. I have been around the block enough times to know that, even when they ...
Single-payer still comes out on top
November 20, 2011
Rutland Herald By Ellen Oxfeld What are the potential savings from a single-payer health care system in Vermont? A recent report from the Joint Fiscal Office and the Department of Banking, Insurance, Securities and Health Care Administration has led some single-payer opponents to claim that significant cost containment can occur without single-payer. This is a spurious claim that misinterprets the report and challenges the fundamental precepts of the study the Legislature commissioned las...
Seven reasons single-payer health care will be great for Vermont business
September 15, 2011
Burlington Free Press By Bram Kleppner One: Quality. Our health care system doesn’t produce very good health. Of the world’s 33 developed countries, the United States ranks near the bottom in health indicators like infant death, death that could have been prevented by proper health care, and life expectancy. From North America to Europe to the Middle East to Asia, people in countries with single-payer systems are consistently healthier than Americans. Healthy workers do better wor...
The Economic Urgency of Health Care Reform
August 05, 2011
Huffington Post By Governor Peter Shumlin, Governor of Vermont Watching the events of the past several weeks in Washington has been sobering. Decades of failed fiscal policy have finally come home to roost and Congress is tied in knots trying to find a compromise solution and avoid American default. Americans rightly are scared that our leaders can't find a way out of this muddle. But the really sobering part is this: the solutions under consideration don't fix the problem. Even if Congress ...
Universal Health Care - Can We Afford Anything Less?
August 03, 2011
Dollars & Sense magazine July/August -Gerald Friedman, professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts. America’s broken health-care system suffers from what appear to be two separate problems. From the right, a chorus warns of the dangers of rising costs; we on the left focus on the growing number of people going without health care because they lack adequate insurance. This division of labor allows the right to dismiss attempts to extend coverage while crying crocodile tea...
The Great Switch
July 28, 2011
Editorial, Rutland HeraldThe Shumlin administration is energetically selling its health care plan even before it has drawn up its details, which often means fielding questions from the public that still have no answers.Gov. Peter Shumlin and others were in Rutland this week for a forum to talk about the health care reforms that are taking shape following passage of Shumlin's health care bill earlier this year. At this point the most that Shumlin and his top health aide, Anya Rader Wallack, could...
Vermont Leads the Way
June 15, 2011
Truthout Op-EdBy Jim Hightower"We have a problem," said House Speaker Shap Smith of Vermont. "We need to solve it."This comment reflects a no-nonsense, hands-on, can-do attitude you rarely find in legislative bodies these days. Instead, when most so-called leaders are confronted with a problem, they tend to say, "We need to cover it up," or, "Let's turn this thing into a political football." But Smith and a big majority of his Vermont colleagues refused to...
Fertile ground for a single-payer bill
May 27, 2011
Burlington Free Press Written by Ellen Oxfeld Gov. Peter Shumlin signed the new health care bill into law Thursday. Many people may wonder how we came to this point. Why is it that Vermont is the first state to pass legislation that acknowledges that health care is a public good, and that the best route toward universal access and cost control is to create a healthcaresystem that is publicly funded? There are still many more steps to go be fore we reach this goal. One thin...
Fear-mongering over health care
May 26, 2011
Rutland Herald By John L. Franco Jr. In a recent opinion piece, Republican Rutland City Treasurer Wendy Wilton critiqued the analysis of potential single-payer costs and savings developed for the Vermont Legislature by Harvard economist William Hsiao. Ms. Wilton purports to “prove” that a single-payer program in Vermont will be doomed from the start. Her analysis is flawed in several ways: n She first overstates the program size by about 25,000 people. A single-payer system is def...
A State of Healthy Firsts
May 26, 2011
Vermont is a land of proud firsts. This small, New England state was the first to join the 13 Colonies. Its constitution was the first to ban slavery. It was the first to establish the right to free education for all — public education. Today, Vermont will boast another first: the first state in the nation to offer single-payer health care, which eliminates the costly insurance companies that many believe are the root cause of our spiraling health care costs. In a single-payer system, bot...
My Turn: Canadian health care misstated
May 01, 2011
I am a medical doctor, semi-retired living in Vermont and having a limited practice. Prior to moving to Vermont two and a half years ago I practiced full time, dividing my practice between the Detroit area in Michigan and Windsor, Ontario, an hour drive from Detroit. Thus I have a substantial personal knowledge of medical practice in the USA and Canada. I have been distressed to hear opinions by Vermont medical professionals and local conservatives about the poor care available in Canada, espec...
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