Letters

Bennington Banner You probably have seen Joe Namath on television hawking Medicare Advantage plans. Don’t be fooled! Joe was a decent quarterback, but a health insurance expert, he is not. Right now, there are two versions of Medicare: Original (federal) and Advantage (commercial). In addition, there is a new program called REACH which can switch […]

VTDigger Medicare Advantage is a misnomer You probably have seen Joe Namath on television hawking Medicare Advantage plans. Don’t be fooled! Joe was a decent quarterback, but a health insurance expert, he is not. Right now, there are two versions of Medicare: Original (federal) and Advantage (commercial). In addition, there is a new program called […]

Caledonian Record To the Editor: The Green Mountain Care Board publishes an annual list of Vermont hospital employees whose annual compensation tops $500,000. The list for Fiscal Year 2020 shows a total of 59 hospital execs making more than half a million dollars a year. Fifty-nine. Eleven of them work at Rutland hospital. Thirteen work […]

Addison Independent To the Editor: Thank you for the March 24 editorial and Christopher Ross’s article about ever-rising healthcare costs. Advocates of publicly-funded universal healthcare have not lost interest, as Angelo Lynn suggests. They will never stop working to establish healthcare as a human right, as it is in every other prosperous modern democracy, where […]

Seven Days To the Editor: [Re “Projecting Millions in Losses, Vermont’s Largest Hospitals Ask for Rate Increases,” March 18, online]: So what else is new? Health care costs keep rising. Primary care doctors and nurses are in short supply, overworked and underpaid. There is nowhere for new recruits to live. We must rely on travel […]

VTDigger I have five different insurances for my family of three. They’re all aggravating, but Vermont Health Connect is the worst. After applying for my wife last July and being denied subsidies under an arcane rule whereby we were assessed as individuals rather than family, I reapplied last November, as our situation had changed due […]

Seven Days The rapid disappearance of independent doctors in Vermont [“The Doctor Is Out,” December 8], especially from rural areas, should worry us all. To me, there is a simple solution to the problem of rural health care’s financial woes and the loss of independent physician practices: a publicly funded universal health care program — […]

Times Argus We recently learned the federal government has notified the state of Vermont that the enrollment targets for all-payer model (and thus, OneCare) are “unattainable” and “unnecessary.” This is an entirely new way to set standards. Imagine if a professor or teacher tells her students they need to write three papers, then decides it […]

Seven Days To the Editor: I thank Seven Days for the excellent story on the University of Vermont Medical Center’s use of temporary nurses [“Health Care Premium,” November 3]. These extra millions spent on the temporary nurses come from our fee, premium and tax dollars. That money ought to support local doctors, nurses, staff and […]

VTDigger Many Vermonters don’t have access to affordable health care. Besides the uninsured, 36% of us are underinsured, meaning a serious health care problem would be a financial disaster. And yet the Legislature has studiously avoided discussion of structural reform or public financing. The Task Force on Affordable and Accessible Health Care talks about tweaking […]