Editorials

VTDigger The dire state of primary care in Vermont is now serious news, drawing the attention of everybody from the Legislature to the Vermont Medical Society to Vermont Public Radio to the Green Mountain Care Board. We can add that problem to the problem of the outrageously high cost of health care that discourages even […]

Note:  This article is authored by Lee Russ of Bennington (also a board member of Vermont Health Care for All). The Progressive By Lee Russ For some time now, the agency tasked with overseeing Medicare has been rather quietly killing the program. So quietly that you probably didn’t even know about it.Many people consider Medicare […]

Addison Independent By Angelo Lynn With the world’s problems at everyone’s doorstep each morning, or at their fingertips any time of the day, it’s little wonder that news about the cost of healthcare has dropped out of sight. Pre-pandemic it was one of the nation’s top concerns, but since then it’s now somewhere below several […]

VTDigger This commentary is by Marvin Malek, M.D., an internist who works on the hospitalist service at Springfield Hospital in Vermont. He serves on the executive committee of Vermont Physicians for a National Health Program. Fred Thys’s article March 4 in VTDigger does a superb job demonstrating how the UVM-United Healthcare spat directly affects the […]

Vermont Standard By Kurt Staudter Back when I was in college, I wrote an exhaustive paper on the Vermont experience moving towards a single-payer universal coverage healthcare system. At the time when the Vermont Democrats had the Senate, the House and our smiling governor looked into the camera and told us that the struggle was […]

This is an emergency. If we do not have the courage to address it, we will all pay the price. Timidly poking at the edges of the flaming fire will never extinguish it. The most effective solution is a publicly funded single-payer plan.

VTDigger This commentary is by Nick Santoro, a resident of Rutland. With the deathly mess American government and the privatized medical industry have made with their Covid slapdash strategy, it seems a wee bit timely to design a universal health care system for those who need it (most of us), in conjunction with existing privatized […]

Vermont Standard By Kurt Staudter “The time to reboot Vermont’s health care reform efforts are long overdue. It is time to rip the Band-Aid off and start anew to achieve better quality and savings for Vermonters,” — Rep. David Yacovone (D) Morrisville in an opinion piece in the Morrisville News-Citizen. Ask Governor Phil Scott what’s […]

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 […]