This commentary is by Robert Gardner of Rochester. He is a retired television journalist.
The radical and ill-conceived proposal to close Gifford Medical Center as part of an overall plan to reduce health care costs in Vermont reminds me of a good friend who was suffering from cancer and was given very aggressive chemotherapy. He was cured of the cancer, but the chemotherapy killed him.
The small towns of Vermont, the foundation of Vermont’s deep character and charm, are complex and fragile, their social fabric made up of the poor and the privileged, the traditions of their agricultural past, and the challenges of rapidly changing demographics and social change. They do not fit easily into a desire for efficiency or sensible square corners. They are complicated. They are vulnerable. Continue reading…..