To the Editor:
When we debate healthcare costs and medical care access, the conversation too often ignores a crucial choice Vermont can make to secure affordable, quality healthcare for all, which is a publicly funded universal health care system.
On Town Meeting Day this year, seven Addison County towns and Putney enthusiastically voted for a resolution urging our legislators to pursue publicly funded universal primary care as a first step toward a statewide universal healthcare system. This year, a group of us are working to have this resolution considered by every other Vermont town on Town Meeting Day. The resolution states:
“Shall the voters of [TOWN NAME HERE] call upon the General Assembly to establish a publicly financed universal primary care system, including mental health services, and substance use treatment, as a first step in phasing in universal health care for all Vermont residents?”
Vermont Act 48, signed into law in 2011, set a legislative framework intended to move the state toward a universal, single-payer health care system named Green Mountain Care. Act 48 established universal health care as a legal right in Vermont.
Vermont’s healthcare is in crisis, as our legislators well know. Universal primary care would help address that crisis by providing every Vermont resident with access to comprehensive primary care without premiums, deductibles, or co-pays. The program would be publicly financed, the costs being offset by reductions in health insurance premiums. The program will eliminate out-of-pocket payments for primary care. By reducing administrative costs and emphasizing prevention, universal primary care would help control the healthcare costs that are driving school budgets and property taxes upward. (Pills for high blood pressure from a primary care provider are a lot cheaper than treating a stroke caused by untreated high blood pressure.) This resolution urges Vermont’s legislature to finally take action to implement publicly funded universal primary care.
The people are ready for this commonsense response to our dilemma. We only need our elected leaders to move this discussion forward in the legislature.
This resolution is inspired by the example set by the Canadian Province of Saskatchewan which, in 1947 jumpstarted Canada’s universal healthcare plan by enacting a measure to cover all hospital care services in the province as a first step toward universal healthcare coverage for all Canadians. It was a big success and in 1984 led to Canada’s publicly funded health care system.
We in Vermont can do the same. Our brave little state can be a beacon for how to establish a publicly funded universal health care system in the U.S.
The U.S. is the only industrialized country that does not have some form of publicly funded universal healthcare. Our health outcomes are worse, and our costs are higher. Insurance and administration take 25-30 % of healthcare dollars yet provides no care. It’s time for health insurance to be relegated to the trash heap of history. There are many ways to finance universal care and the savings from prevention and early treatment will easily cover the costs. And, most importantly, access to care will be guaranteed as a basic premise.
Vermont is not too small to accomplish this, following the example of similarly sized countries like Iceland. We can do this. And in the face of the impending collapse of our insurance-based health care industry, we urgently need to do what every other industrialized country does.
Jack Mayer, Middlebury
Ellen Oxfeld, Middlebury
Mike Palmer, Cornwall
Jack Mayer has been a Vermont primary care pediatrician since 1976. He founded Rainbow pediatrics in Middlebury in 1991 and retired in 2021.