Editorials

VTDIGGER This commentary is by Jack Mayer, M.D., MPH, of Middlebury, a retired pediatrician and writer who founded Rainbow Pediatrics in Middlebury in 1991. He has been a persistent critic of the private health care system in the United States. I’ve spent my professional life as a primary care pediatrician, mostly in Vermont. Now I’m […]

VTDigger This commentary is by Lee Russ of Bennington, a retired legal editor who was the lead editor/author of both the third edition of “Couch on Insurance” and the Attorneys Medical Advisor. Imagine a group of people watching a house burn. They are gathered around a fire hydrant and a hose is coiled at their […]

VTDigger This commentary was written by Laura Waters, am a retired environmental consultant living in South Burlington. I saw the recent article in VTDigger about the state employees union fighting the state’s plan to go to Medicare Advantage and felt compelled to respond with our recent experience. There are way too many glib sales pitches […]

Vermont Standard By Kurt Staudter Back in 2013, Governor Peter Shumlin took an obscure Burlington restaurateur and made him the Chairman and the business representative on the newly formed Green Mountain Care Board (GMCB). Al Gobeille was put in charge of our long-awaited move towards a single-payer, universal coverage, high quality healthcare system. Vermont would […]

Time Argus By Mary Alice Bisbee “A health care system that financially punishes the ill.” The above quote is one I found on the internet today. This is the system the United States of America has devised over many years. Does it make sense to you or anyone that we should penalize sick people for […]

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 […]