Jeff Seymour: School district consolidation is barking up the wrong tree

VTDigger Dear Editor, I do not support the governor’s plan to consolidate school districts. I grew up outside of Denver Colorado, in a district roughly as populous as Vermont. And do you know what that school district is grappling with today? How to plug holes in its $1 billion budget without increasing property taxes for […]

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Lee Russ: Health care reform debates need to include patients’ interests

VTDigger Dear Editor, Tom Sullivan is right that “It’s time to come together to find common ground and an amicable path forward for health care reform in Vermont.” But he lists the parties that should come together as “health care providers, regulators, insurance carriers and the Legislature.” What’s missing from that list? Patients: all those […]

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Single-payer solution

Times Argus I just read the headline No silver bullet solution re health care/education/taxes. Actually, there is: Single payer would solve all those problems. Health care costs would go down, so education costs would go down, so taxes would go down — win-win-win. Sandra Bettis   Montpelier —

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Healthcare is Not Acceptable

Caledonian Record To the Editor: As the commercial healthcare industry launches a public defense of itself in the wake of the killing of United Healthcare’s CEO, many point to Canada and the UK as reasons to fear a single payer healthcare system for Americans. These single payer opponents seem to simply ignore the reasons that […]

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Walter Carpenter: CEO pay is no red herring in the health care debate

VTDigger It shows remarkable insensitivity to the average Vermonter that the top brass was unwilling to reduce their lavish compensation packages by even a penny to share in the sacrifices we all have to make now. In response to Dr. Nat Mulkey’s recent commentary, “It’s time for a new narrative on the UVM Health Network […]

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Patients, unite

The Valley Reporter Three recent events, one of them local and closely covered by this publication, are indicative of the parlous state of the American health care system. The local event, of course, is the announced closing of two facilities in The Valley because of a fiscal crisis at the UVM Health Network, with which […]

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System Is Sick

Seven Days Re “Urgent Scare,” November 6; “UVM Health Network Announces Service Cuts, Blames Regulators,” November 14, online]: Two recent articles by Colin Flanders portray a health care system on the verge of collapse. Premium increases, hospital closures and diminishing access will cause more Vermonters to forgo health care and insurance. Healthy people will leave […]

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We Had a Plan

Seven Days I was dismayed, but not surprised, that Seven Days included only one dismissive sentence about Vermont’s universal health care law in the recent article about the health care crisis [“Urgent Scare,” November 6]. Plans to implement Act 48 did not “implode in 2014” because former governor Peter Shumlin “learned how much it would […]

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