Peggy Sapphire, Craftsbury My husband and I have Medicare & Aetna, but Aetna has no preferred provider network in Vermont. We live in VT on a fixed Social Security pension. Five years ago my husband was diagnosed with bladder cancer. His treatment began with a Barre,VT urologist, and within 2 years we’d incurred such significant […]

Tara Meyer, Nurse Practitioner, Burlington I was in my last semester of my Family Nurse Practitioner program at UVM. Vermont has a program called Ladies First, which basically covers some preventive care (like mammograms) for women without health insurance. When I was a new student I thought this was great– “Wow, in Vermont, all women […]

Gina Mazer, Montpelier I have a chronic, genetic illness called Gaucher’s Disease, which means I need to receive an infusion of an enzyme that I am missing on a monthly or twice a month basis, at the hospital. This replacement enzyme (called Cerezyme) is extremely expensive, so much so that if my insurance has a […]

By: Melinda Moulton, CEO/Redeveloper of Main Street Landing & Single Payer Supporter For over 26 years Main Street Landing has provided 100% Health Coverage for our employees and their families at no expense to them. Main Street Landing pays 23% of our payroll toward health insurance for our employees and their families. Why – because […]

Alice Bleachy, Calais I am on a very expensive brand name drug for which there is no generic equivalent. The insurance company has dropped this drug from its formulary for 2010. The alternative nonsteroidal anti-inflammatories in their formulary are untried by me and are also expensive. The cost of this drug is so high that […]

Anonymous I want to highlight some examples of how easy it is to be marginalized from access to healthcare in the State of Vermont. As someone who has an auto-immune disease I can not risk losing my insurance. At present I am eligible for coverage under my partner’s employer, but without that option I would […]

Walter Carpenter, Montpelier This is only a synopsis of what I went through. The real story is, so far, 26 pages long. For good or bad I am old enough now to remember back to the mid part of the last century and a skit by a comedian named Jack Benny where a gunman holds […]