Letters

Seven Days Headlines about “advancing” health care reforms would be encouraging if Vermonters weren’t already living the crisis Seven Days documented back in January. Your January 22 episode of “Stuck in Vermont” and follow-up Q&A [“An Apple a Day: Vermonters Are Struggling With the Rising Costs of Health Insurance, and Some Are Choosing to Go […]

Brattleboro Reformer To the Editor: If the nurses and support staff of Brattleboro Memorial Hospital decide to strike, I will stand by them. As the cost of living continues to rise, they are facing cuts to critical benefits such as healthcare, paid time off, union rights, as well as a 3-year wage freeze. In their […]

Rutland Herald Having health insurance is not a goal in itself. The goal is to be able to get health care when you need it. If you have health insurance but can’t get health care when you need it, your insurance has failed in its only purpose. That’s why the idea of “underinsured” is just […]

Seven Days [“Manage Your Care: To Lower Health Costs, Vermont’s Largest Insurance Company Is Urging Patients to Shop Around,” January 14] was a breathtaking display of arrogance from Blue Cross Blue Shield of Vermont. It was also an insult to us, as patients, and to humanity in general. By urging Vermonters to “become savvier consumers,” […]

Addison Independent On Town Meeting Day, many towns in Addison County will have a chance to weigh in on our health care crisis. Resolutions showing support for universal primary care as proposed in H.433 are on the ballots or will be voted on at the in-person meetings in Middlebury, Bristol, Salisbury, Weybridge, Cornwall and Brandon. […]

Times Argus In her commentary, House Health Care Committee Chair Alyssa Black talks of how health care “is designed to be complicated and complex.” She talks of opening the “black box” of health care affordability and financing. However, she never mentions the proven viability of universal single-payer health care adopted worldwide. In 1947, the Honourable […]

Addison Independent To the Editor: I appreciate the Addison Independent’s coverage of healthcare bills ready for consideration by our state legislators. As our federal government destroys healthcare safety nets, we can start addressing the problem here in Vermont. The cost of health insurance is astronomical. Too many people are unable to access care until something catastrophic […]

Seven Days [Re “Manage Your Care: To Lower Health Costs, Vermont’s Largest Insurance Company Is Urging Patients to Shop Around,” January 14]: The Blue Cross Blue Shield ad campaign urging patients to “shop around” and avoid the University of Vermont Medical Center when possible is a textbook example of late-stage capitalism: one powerful institution accusing […]

Rutland Herald Yes, those of us who have been trying to push for universal/single payer health care funding for every Vermonter, are quite aware that education staff, teachers, maintenance staff and all education employees’ insurance costs to cover health care, are the single most costly part of education funding. There is a very simple solution […]

Bennington Banner To the Editor: Blue Cross Blue Shield (BCBS) of Vermont now says Vermonters have a “personal responsibility” to become “savvier consumers” in light of Vermont’s “health care affordability crisis.” How odd. We have several institutions that comprise and control healthcare—the hospitals, the insurance companies, the regulators, the legislators—but BCBS thinks each of the […]