Editorials

VTDigger The oldest exposed reef fossils in the world lie in Isle LaMotte, Vermont, where they came to rest 480 million years ago after one of the most violent tectonic plate shifts the Earth’s surface ever experienced. The fossils originated in Africa. A less violent but equally destructive disruption is occurring in health care. Here […]

VTDigger This commentary is by Marvin Malek, M.D., who also holds a master’s degree in public health and is an internist/hospitalist at Springfield (Vt.) Hospital. This week brought two milestones in the Covid pandemic:The Covid death toll in the U.S. reached 688,000. 675,000 is the best estimate of the number of U.S. deaths that occurred […]

VTDigger This commentary is by Peter Wilhelm, M.D., a family doctor at Middlebury Family Health, and a board member of Health First, Vermont’s independent practice association, representing health care practitioners working at physician-owned practices throughout the state. As many recent contributors have pointed out, Vermonters have seen significant increases in health care costs in the […]

VTDigger This commentary is from Marvin Klikunas, M.D., whose medical practice is in Williston. As I write this commentary, the seven-day rolling average of daily Covid cases in Vermont is 209. Even during the depths of last winter, before a vaccine was available, the daily average as plotted in VTDigger never reached 200. Forty-eight people […]

VTDigger This commentary is by Patrick Flood, former commissioner of the Department of Mental Health and the Department of Disabilities, Aging and Independent Living, and former deputy secretary of the Agency of Human Services. He is now retired and lives in Woodbury. Recently there has been a lot of press coverage of a Centers for […]

VTDigger This commentary is by Marvin Malek, M.D., MPH, a general internist practicing hospital medicine in Springfield. A study published in the July 21 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association reported that 17.8% of Americans had medical-related debt that had been sent to debt collections agencies. Since there is nearly always a […]

VTDigger This commentary is by Julie Wasserman, MPH, of Burlington, a health policy consultant working independently. She worked for Vermont state government for over 25 years, including division director of policy and planning for the Department of Aging and Disabilities, and legislative staff to the Senate Health and Welfare Committee. She participated in Vermont’s three-year […]

Caledonian Record By Lee Russ You know what’s really hard to do? Solve a problem when you ignore all the facts about that problem. Which leads me to the unmitigated disaster that we call “American healthcare.” There’s near universal agreement that our current health care system costs far too much, really doesn’t work that well […]

It’s only fair to acknowledge that BCBS is stuck between a rock and a greedy pharmaceutical industry. The cost of prescription drugs is a major driver in the skyrocketing cost of health care coverage......It’s just one more reason why we need single-payer health care.

Seven Days By Paula Routy I’ve had some bad migraine headaches in the last 40 years, but none like the one that sent me to the emergency room on April 13. The first sign of it — a fuzzy line through my field of vision — came just before dinner, but I soldiered on through […]