The Vermont Standard
By: Kurt Staudter

For most of my adult life I’ve been a supporter of systemic change to the way we deal with the care and well-being of our citizens.

Our health care system is broken. Wait. That’s just a little too kind a way of saying it: Perhaps a better way to say it is… But no, I can’t use those kinds of words in a family paper. Just this last week I lost a classmate that had good insurance, and did everything he was supposed to when he unexplainably didn’t feel well. His wife took him to the emergency room, he was checked out, and told that he had bronchitis and a touch of pneumonia. Given an inhaler and told to go home and rest, Bill went home and died.

I don’t know, maybe it’s because I’m getting older, or maybe it’s because I pay attention to the issue: It seems that these kinds of stories of how our healthcare system fails so miserably are becoming more frequent. Then there is the promise of change that will come through Obamacare, or a single-payer system being hatched by the Shumlin administration. The Democrats in my life all tell me that reform is going to work, and that we need to be patient. One likened it to this massive multi trillion dollar ship that we are trying to change the course of — “Small changes are all we can expect at first.” Yet, no matter which way you look at these efforts there is no doubt that there is more being done making sure that the powerful special interests that profit from the current dysfunctional system are better taken care of than the citizens that are to get the healthcare.

There is a reason that we don’t see systemic change in any of our dysfunctional systems. At this point our politicians are being bought and sold like prime cuts of beef at Shaws. Oh, and just because we here in Vermont have a part-time legislature does not make our lawmakers immune to the corrupting influence of money. I tell this story all the time because it deserves repeating, and that it’s the prevailing attitude of most lawmakers: One lawmaker who will remain nameless told me “With no staff, I get most of my best information from the lobbyists.”

OK, so maybe it’s not quite as bad here in Vermont as it is in other states, and not even in the same galaxy as what goes on down in Washington, D.C., but we are naïve to believe that powerful special interests play no role in what happens under the golden dome. Let’s leave health care for a moment, and just look at what happened to efforts this year to provide workers with paid sick days, or to raise the minimum wage.

The Chamber of Commerce, various small business associations, and individual ma-and-pops all turned out to put the kibosh on these two common sense measures. I especially like the argument that business owners use that they would have to hire fewer people. Well, think about it, if an employer can’t afford the proper care and feeding of their employee perhaps they shouldn’t have employees in the first place. Right now Vermont has one of the lowest unemployment rates in the nation, while there are a number of reasons for this (Lack of opportunity, an aging workforce, and the crappy way the number is calculated to name a few) it doesn’t change the fact that now is the best time to make these changes. Yet powerful special interests are pressuring our lawmakers; you just know that money and the way campaigns are financed by both candidates and the advocacy groups plays a huge role in the outcome of any given law.

I don’t know about the rest of you, but when I see someone like Representative Tess Taylor leave the House leadership job of Majority Whip to take a job lobbying the legislature it makes me sick. Now mind you, this is someone that is working for my side of the healthcare issue taking the job of Executive Director for the new pro-single-payer group that was created by the American Federation of Teachers. I’m aware that even our lawmakers have to earn a living, but to leave near the end of the biennium to take this job just stinks, and this isn’t the first time it’s happened. The fact that no one in Montpelier does anything to curb this practice makes them all culpable in this crime against our Democracy.

I don’t know how we get the influence of money out of politics when the folks we are asking to fix the problem are the beneficiaries of the status quo. I don’t know how we fix the broken things before they become the crisis of the day when the folks we are asking to behave proactively stubbornly cling to failed solutions that perpetuate the status quo. I don’t know how we elect leaders that won’t parlay their seat in the legislature for that high paying job protecting the status quo. For way too long we have sent custodians of the status quo to do the work of the people, and instead they carry water for the highest bidder. It makes me sick, and I have no confidence in our healthcare or political systems to cure what ails me. I do know that when someone puts their name on the ballot promising to end the status quo they will have my undivided attention, as well as my financial support.

Contact Kurt Staudter at staudter@sover.net.