How much sway does the voice of the people really have in the People’s House?
On Town Meeting Day, eight Vermont towns resoundingly called on the Legislature to take up a bill that would launch a multiphase universal health care program, called Green Mountain Care.
That bill, H.433, did not make it past crossover deadlines and has no real chance of becoming a law this year. But House Health Care Committee members still took it off the wall Wednesday and had legislative counsel Jennifer Carbee walk them through the bill’s language — “for educational purposes,” at least, said Rep. Alyssa Black, D-Essex Town, the committee chair.
Still, the activists behind the Town Meeting Day resolution found legislators’ approach to the faltering bill promising.
“I was buoyed,” Dr. Jack Mayer, a primary care physician who testified before the committee Wednesday, told VTDigger. He was one of the driving forces behind putting the resolution to town meeting voters. Continue reading….