Letters

Caledonian Record To the Editor: As we all know, our healthcare system relies on multiple “payers” and the commercial insurance payers each issue many, many different policies, each with different terms. This system depends on a dizzying array of codes and paperwork to function. The billing efforts alone eat up enormous amounts of time and […]

Seven Days Thanks for “Ways and Means: Legislation, STAT!” [September 3]. This focused on how health care legislation not being the main show in the building last year allowed the House and Senate health care committees to quietly get through several bills to hopefully lower our crazy-high health care costs — things like reference-based pricing, […]

St. Albans Messenger I thank Mr. Emerson Lynn for his commentary “Why Green Mountain Care Board [GMCB] had to take on UVMMC (Messenger, September 19, 2025).” It has long been past time for that and I wholeheartedly agree with Mr. Lynn’s summary of what actions the GMCB took with UVMMC and why it had to […]

The Caledonian Record The report that St. Johnsbury’s Northeastern Vermont Regional Hospital is cutting staff and programs  continues a dangerous trend across the state. Services that the community needs, like obstetrics and in-patient psychiatric care, get closed because we don’t finance hospitals based on community needs and with public financing. So they end programs that […]

St.Albans Messenger Emerson Lynn is correct when he states that potential cuts to Medicaid will be a disaster for our hospital system that is already in crisis (see 6-20-25 editorial).  It’s true that our legislature has recently passed a bill that attempts to rein in hospital prices by pegging them to Medicare rates and has […]

Valley Post By Eisha Williams The following article is by some of the 520 workers at Brattleboro Memorial Hospital; they e-mailed this article to the Valley Post on June 25: Earlier this year, the 325 ancillary staff at Brattleboro Memorial Hospital (BMH) proudly voted to form our union, Brattleboro Healthcare United. Despite BMH management spending […]

Addison Independent At 2:01 Thursday morning, June 5th, our 59 year old sister-in-law/sister died from an aggressive cancer, 11 months after her diagnosis. She had worked hard for almost 40 years and had savings and owned her own home. However, when she could no longer work, she had to pay for COBRA insurance at a […]

VTDigger To the Editor, In the latest outrageous Vermont health care news, we learn that Vermont hospitals are marking up outpatient drugs to an average of more than 500% of the manufacturer’s price (and in one case nearly 70 times the manufacturer’s price) — the highest markup in the nation. This is one of several […]

Bennington Banner Our healthcare “system” operates via a Byzantine system of price hikes, price discounts, different pricing for different customers, and an immense web of middlemen who operate it all. The complexity and the middlemen will always keep prices higher than they otherwise would be. Always. Our irrational system causes immense personal harm and misery, […]

Seven Days Thanks to Seven Days for [“Code Red,” May 7], on how the state’s health care leaders are scrambling to prevent another colossal insurance hike in rates or the implosion of the state’s health care system. It is excessively telling and sad that Rep. Alyssa Black (D-Essex), chair of the House Health Care Committee, […]