In the News
VT for Single Payer has compiled recent news articles and letters to the editor about Single Payer Health Care in Vermont. To view all the recent news stories click here. To view all the recent letters to the editor click here. To view all recent Editorials and Op-Eds click here.
Recent News Stories
HSPH Professor Helps with Vermont Health Care Reform
December 07, 2011
The Harvard CrimsonWilliam C. Hsiao is not an imposing man. He stands barely five feet eight inches tall and at age 75 affects an air of unpretentious expertise. He speaks slowly, in accented English—a remainder of his immigrant childhood—that expresses his ideas simply and logically, point by point.Despite his approachability and clarity, the points that Hsiao, an economics professor at the Harvard School of Public Health, has chosen to study and argue are neither simple nor without...
Vermont universal care seen as costing less than existing system
November 11, 2011
amednews.comA universal health care program in Vermont would cost between $8.2 billion and $9.5 billion a year by 2020. But the state's existing health system would cost $10 billion by 2020, according to an estimate released Nov. 1 by the Vermont Legislative Joint Fiscal Office and the Vermont Dept. of Banking, Insurance, Securities and Health Care Administration. Vermont's health care spending was $4.7 billion in 2009.The report is part of the process of creating a universal health care program...
Universal health care plan could save $1.834 billion
November 03, 2011
VTDiggerThe Shumlin administration’s signature “single-payer” style health care plan could save as much as $1.834 billion by 2020, according to a report released on Tuesday.That’s the best-case scenario. Under more conservative estimates, the report from the Joint Fiscal Office and Department of Banking, Insurance, Securities and Health Care Administration, [2] puts savings at $553 million by 2020. The report, produced with assistance from consultant Steve Kappel with Pol...
Letters to the Editor
Green Mount Care Criticism Premature
January 27, 2012
Burlington Free PressRandy Brock, a contender for governor in 2012, and others of his political persuasion have targeted the Green Mountain Care Board as a campaign issue. Although the Green Mountain Care Board, mandated by Act 48, has barely begun its work for real health care reform, Brock and other reactionary pundits are already trying to trash its existence even before any plan has been formulated! Expect to see more of the same during this election cycle.All other industrialized nations ha...
Why We Need Health Care Reform
December 12, 2011
Burlington Free Press I would like to thank Pat McDonald, chairwoman of the Vermont Republican Party, for her "My Turn" piece in the Dec. 1 edition of the Burlington Free Press ("Health Care report ignores big questions"). McDonald illustrates so perfectly why we need the complete and systematic health care reform that Vermont embarked on when Gov. Shumlin signed H.202 last May. "The government," she wrote, "needs to make smart and rational decisions, and be ...
The Morality of Health Care
November 27, 2011
Rutland HeraldI would like to thank Dr. Ted Shattuck for his commentary “Vermont can lead the way” in the Nov. 13 edition of the Rutland Herald and Times Argus. Dr. Shattuck made some valid points that seem to have gone missing from our long and tortuous debate on health care reform.In one of these, for instance, Dr. Shattuck wrote that, “22,000 to 45,000 Americans die of preventable deaths each year due to a lack of basic health care.” These are staggering statistics of ...
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Editorials and Op-Eds
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...