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 […]

By Ellen Oxfeld, VT for Single Payer Supporter, Middlebury In a recent legislative hearing at the state capital, representatives of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Vermont said that their administrative costs were less than 10 percent of every dollar spent on health care.  So, why do single payer advocates say that our present health […]

By: Ethan Parke, VT for Single Payer, Supporter The federal health care legislation that is about to become law does more harm than good and should be scrapped. That is the position now taken by the Physicians for a National Health Program. It’s also the position of the executive director of the nation’s largest nurses’ […]