“Our history of calling people back is so god awful I hesitate to do it. I wonder why the hell – excuse my language Mr. Chairman – I wonder why we tell people we’re going to call them back at all,” Lawrence Miller, during testimony to lawmakers on problems with VT Health Connect.
Over the years of writing this column, and even before I put pen to paper, I’ve had the notion that dealing with the healthcare crisis is going to be the defining act of my generation. We will either get it right the first time, try numerous times to fix it, or be so paralyzed by indecision that nothing substantial gets done. The size of this crisis can’t be over exaggerated, and efforts so far do little but preserve the dysfunctional status quo. Right now we have care that is little better than what one would receive in the third world, costs are skyrocketing out of control and are the major driving force on our property taxes, and still, millions of American can’t afford care. The current system is broken and can’t be fixed! The Affordable Care Act should have been landmark legislation akin to Social Security and Medicare, but instead we got the No Insurance Company Left Behind Act.
The stories we are now hearing about costly insurance with huge co-pays, Kafkaesque exchanges that make it impossible to make the simplest of changes and huge numbers of uninsured Americans now awaiting the reckoning that will come at tax time because they wouldn’t or couldn’t get insurance. Obamacare is a cruel hoax dressed up as a solution, and you can bet that the upcoming congressional elections will be a pretty good report card on how we’re doing so far. However, the kneejerk reaction to all the negative hype about Obamacare, and the thought that the same obstructionist crowd in the House might get control of the Senate, leaves me afraid that even small fixes will be beyond the ability of our federal government.
So we probably shouldn’t be expecting a federal solution to the healthcare crisis any time soon. We’ll be lucky if Obamacare makes it through the next two years unscathed. Here in Vermont the recent testimony of Lawrence Miller to the House Committee on Healthcare that was refreshingly candid. Lawrence Miller had been the Secretary of the VT Agency of Commerce and Community Development, and has now been asked by Governor Shumlin to head up the efforts on healthcare reform. While I wouldn’t wish this task on my worst enemy, there is no one I trust more with this effort than Lawrence Miller.
I ran into Lawrence Miller recently and was able to get a sense of what he was dealing with in his new job. As you can tell from the quote that I got from VPR of his testimony to the House healthcare committee, there is a deep-rooted frustration with the rate of progress. Miller is a successful businessman, was a great agency secretary, and is the kind of person that gets things done quickly and efficiently. Wading into our ambitious efforts at healthcare reform has to be like trying to swim in quicksand for this man of action. I got no sense that he is looking to modify our goal of a single-payer solution, in fact, he seems committed to fixing what’s wrong now, and looking at coming up with a responsible and fair way to finance whatever comes next here in Vermont.
What was very encouraging in talking to Miller is he understands that we are in a crisis. Finally, there is someone with his hands on the levers that knows what needs to get done, and is an effective enough leader to make it so. He understands that this may not have a free-market solution, and although the efforts so far haven’t been very encouraging as far as a public-sector solution, he is hell bent on fixing the problems.
All that being said, now we are entering the silly season of campaigns. Every elected position in state and county government is up for grabs. Even if some wannabe lawmakers want to talk about things other than healthcare, we need to remind them that it is this single issue that the next session of the legislature will decide. Will we be the first in the nation to move towards a single-payer healthcare system? That will be up to this new crop of lawmakers to ponder and debate. As far as those with concerns about the direction we are headed in, that’s fine, but those critics that just want to tear the playhouse down without offering solutions have no place in the discourse. We are talking about systemic reform of our healthcare system, and finding a solution to a crisis that will affect the quality of life for generations of Vermonters.
There is a petition that is being circulated calling for lawmakers to continue work towards the goal of a single-payer healthcare system in Vermont. To sign the “Stick with Act 48” petition go to: https://vermontforsinglepayer.org/TakeAction. I know I’ll be looking to see if my lawmakers have signed it.