Letters

VTDigger I heartily thank Green Mountain Care Board members Owen Foster and Thom Walsh for their pointed grilling of OneCare’s highly paid executives for one piece of evidence that OneCare has done any good for Vermonters. As Owen Foster, the care board’s new chair, said, “Vermonters, either through taxpayer-funded health care groups, out-of-pocket expenses, copays […]

VTDigger Hey, everything you say is true. The problem: we live in a capitalist, profit-driven economic system. That’s all. Unless you take capital out of the conversation, it cannot and never will change. Spending less money on health won’t make anyone more money — hard stop right there. As you correctly pointed out, playing at […]

VTDigger “Insurance companies and other brokers are making false or misleading claims to dupe senior citizens into purchasing Medicare Advantage plans,” according to a recent U.S. Senate Finance Committee report. The report — which comes as we are being flooded with paid internet ads, postal mailings, telephone calls, and TV and radio promotions — states […]

Times Argus The recent urging by UVM Medical Center’s overwhelmed ER that patients seek treatment elsewhere largely reflects the shortage of primary care. You cannot resolve routine problems and complaints with your primary-care clinician if you do not have one … and there are massive waiting lists to get one. Primary care has become an […]

VTDigger This commentary is by Walter Carpenter of Montpelier, who works in Vermont’s tourism business and is a writer and a health care activist. In 2006, at the point of death, he says, he had to shop around and negotiate the price of his life because he did not have insurance. I was excessively appalled […]

VTDigger The recent urging by UVM Medical Center’s overwhelmed ER that patients seek treatment elsewhere largely reflects the shortage of primary care. You cannot resolve routine problems and complaints with your primary care clinician if you do not have one — and there are massive waiting lists to get one. Primary care has become an […]

Rutland Herald Apparently, real health care would be too un-American. The recent news that UVM Medical Center ER was so overwhelmed, patients were being urged to seek treatment elsewhere marks quite an accomplishment for Vermont. By creating a system of health care that now features incredibly long waits, and emergency rooms so overwhelmed they are […]

Times Argus Pointing out in his commentary “Health care costs” (Oct. 1) that Vermonters spent “an astonishing $7.95 billion on health care in 2020 — over $12,600 per person living in our state,” Mr. Andrew Garland proposes Vermonters should shop around to different hospitals and medical practices as a strategy to help lower these costs. […]

VTDigger Conservatives often use word games to trick voters into voting against their own interests. Take Medicare for All. Opponents point to the amount of money required to run the program and scream that it “costs” too much. They diligently avoid comparing that “cost” to the cost of the insane system we have now. Call […]

VTDigger In reading the recent opinion written by the VP of Client Relations at BlueCross BlueShield of Vermont suggesting price-shopping by patients, comments I have seen are “absurd” and “breathtaking.” Health care costs, the stranglehold of insurance companies and Big Pharma add to a broken system of health care in Vermont and throughout the country. […]