Editorials

VTDigger I was asked recently if there was a simple way to keep track of how our health care system measures up. My “simple” answer was, “Yes, count the number of people in emergency rooms, homeless shelters and jail cells.” I was, in fact, answering a different question focused on “population health” rather than the […]

Times Argus In our email this week came a note from State Auditor Doug Hoffer. The headline stated, “Vermont Supreme Court Deals Serious Blow to Government Transparency and Accountability.” We could not agree more. In fact, we are going to use Hoffer’s own words to explain why this is such a regressive decision. “The Court’s […]

VTDigger This commentary is by Mary Alice Bisbee of Montpelier, a retired hospital and nursing home social worker. Have any of you who are eligible for Medicare noticed any changes in the past few years? Perhaps you have bought into the new Medicare version that has been widely advertised, called Medicare Advantage. Are you aware […]

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 […]