Editorials

VTDigger This commentary is by Melissa Volansky, M.D., a family physician and chief medical officer at Lamoille Health Partners, based in Morrisville. I hope many read the excellent recent article by Colin Flanders in Seven Days decrying Vermont’s impending loss of independent physician practices. We cannot afford to lose these vital professionals. Sadly, by pitting […]

Times Argus Just when you thought the all-payer model and ACO could not get any stranger, there is a new and shocking development. Recently, the Green Mountain Care Board released the 2020 financial and quality care results for OneCare Vermont. The results show OneCare “saved” almost $8 million in Medicare spending and over $15 million […]

VTDigger This commentary is by Dr. Marvin Malek, an internal medicine specialist working at Springfield Hospital. He is also on the executive committee of Vermont Physicians for a National Health Program. In 1938, the notorious bank robber Willie Sutton was asked why he robbed banks. His response: “That’s where the money is.” Were Willie Sutton […]

VTDigger This commentary is by Judy K. Orton, M.D., whose practice is at Green Mountain Pediatrics in Bennington. I have been a solo, independent pediatrician for 32 years at Green Mountain Pediatrics, located in Bennington. I have always strived to use best practices with some healthy common sense in the care of my kids. I […]

VTDigger This commentary is by Rob Hoffman of Quechee. The Green Mountain Care Board is presently deliberating over the 2022 annual budget submission for Vermont’s all-payer model accountable care organization, OneCare Vermont — whose parent company is the University of Vermont Health Network. OneCare has been tasked as the all-payer model’s partner with existential importance. […]

VTDigger This commentary is by John Steen of South Burlington, who, before he retired, was a teacher of philosophy, had a 20-year career in health planning, health regulation and public health, was a professor of health policy, and is immediate past president of the American Health Planning Association. I am responding to a commentary in […]

VTDigger This commentary is by Jane Katz Field, M.D., a retired pediatrician who practiced in Brattleboro. She is vice president of the Vermont chapter Physicians for a National Health Program. She lives in Putney. The Medicare annual enrollment period starts Oct. 15, which means people over 65 will be inundated with ads encouraging them to […]

VTDigger This commentary is by Fred Jagels, who operates Evergreen Economic Research in Cabot, Vt., specializing in those parts of the economy that economists ignore. Like so many other knotty problems we face today, economists are on one planet while the planet we all actually occupy has evolved away from what economists learned in grad […]

VTDigger The oldest exposed reef fossils in the world lie in Isle LaMotte, Vermont, where they came to rest 480 million years ago after one of the most violent tectonic plate shifts the Earth’s surface ever experienced. The fossils originated in Africa. A less violent but equally destructive disruption is occurring in health care. Here […]

VTDigger This commentary is by Marvin Malek, M.D., who also holds a master’s degree in public health and is an internist/hospitalist at Springfield (Vt.) Hospital. This week brought two milestones in the Covid pandemic:The Covid death toll in the U.S. reached 688,000. 675,000 is the best estimate of the number of U.S. deaths that occurred […]