Vermont Digger: Editor’s note: Rep. James Masland, a Democrat, lives in Thetford and has represented District 2 in Windsor and Orange counties since 1998. He was director of the Vermont League of Cities and Towns from 1991 to 1998.
The Vermont Legislature is poised to begin the task of reviewing and evaluating the advisability a financing plan proposed by the administration for Green Mountain Care, a publicly funded universal health care system. Green Mountain Care is the statutory name for what is more commonly referred to as single-payer. Opponents are grasping at each piece of negative press as another reason to scrap it.
Following the November election, Vermont Republican leadership’s Dustin Degree described the election as a referendum on single-payer. More recently, Chris Graff has suggested that, for political reasons, Gov. Shumlin should shelve the idea, at least for a while. Further undermining confidence in government’s role in health care reform, it did not help that Jonathan Gruber, the MIT economist and architect of Obamacare, stated that the federal law’s passage was due to the stupidity of the American voter. Click here to read the entire editorial.