Once again, thanks to Emerson Lynn for another commentary. This one is “Can’t afford to ignore report on Vermont’s Hospitals (Messenger, September 20, 2024).” It concerns the final report from the consultant who examined Vermont’s shameful mess of a health care system, courtesy of the legislative Act 167, Dr. Bruce Hamory. As Mr. Lynn wrote, “if there is a single take-away from the consultant’s report, it is the need to sidestep the inertia that has left us holding a healthcare bill that none of us can afford and a healthcare system on the brink of insolvency.”
No truer words could be spoken about Dr. Hamory’s findings. Yet, while we digest this “healthcare system on the brink of insolvency,” we need to look in the mirror and reflect how we got here This is more than just the absolute failures of our business, cultural, social, and political leadership on this matter. The experts always told us that a publicly funded system of any kind, which would sharply rein in the market shenanigans that brought us to this point, was too expensive and not doable. These experts were most likely looking out for their financial interests first and they were wrong.
A nation’s health system reflects what it values about itself and its people. A nation with a publicly financed type system (there are many variations of this) is valuing its people over profits Our non-system is the reverse: it is profits over people. How many times have I heard these experts refer to patients as “consumers,” as if a patient was out car shopping rather than seeking care to save their life. We put patients up against the brutal logic of our so-called “free market,” something which has never existed except in the spin of clever propagandists.
I could keep going but we all know the results of this by now. We didn’t need Dr. Hamory’s report to tell us this. I have had to negotiate the price of my life with a hospital for a surgery that I needed to keep living. I had two choices: the hospital’s market price or die. We have to not only “do something,” as Mr. Lynn put it. We must ask ourselves whether our values lay in the health of all Vermonters or the health of the businesses that profit from the current mess.
Which is it?
Walter Carpenter
Montpelier, Vt.”