Letters

Rutland Herald The problems with the ACA (Obamacare) website illustrate our convoluted, fragmented, overly expensive, and unequal health insurance system. The ACA has some long overdue reforms — the elimination of pre-existing conditions and very large deductibles and setting an annual cap of out-of-pocket costs. However, this is still an inefficient and cumbersome private insurance-based […]

Burlington Free Press Many people commenting on Vermont’s health care reform have confused the federal Affordable Care Act (ACA) and our state’s universal health care plan that has yet to be implemented. It is important that Vermonters understand that these are two different programs, based on two very different approaches to health care and health […]

Manchester Journal To the Editor: Ron Roper’s column (A Premium is not a Tax, Nov. 10), makes a case against publicly funded universal health care by emphasizing the differences between a health insurance premium and a tax. He says that universal care will be Creating a government monopoly funded by a payroll tax on job […]

Bennington Banner While Vermont and the rest of the nation struggle to phase in Obamacare, we should keep in mind that even when fully implemented Obamacare will not insure everyone. According to recent Census Bureau estimates, in 2012 there were 48 million uninsured Americans. It is estimated that 48,000 Americans died needlessly last year because […]

The Colchester Sun In Emerson Lynn’s editorial about payroll taxes for a proposed single-payer health insurance plan in Vermont (“A payroll tax? How far down the road are we?” Sept. 26), he correctly points out that we need a detailed plan to see how such taxes would impact different businesses large and small. This is […]

Times Argus In his letter “No thank you” (Times Argus, Sept. 6) Mr. Keith Zandy asks several questions of proponents of single-payer health care. One of these is: “When your health care decisions fall into the hands of a cold-hearted bureaucrat, and you are denied treatment that your doctor recommends due to bureaucratic red tape, […]

Times Argus The recent Times Argus headline “Shumlin eyes payroll tax hike” on the front page unfortunately tells only half the story of funding for single payer. It isn’t until the last paragraph on Page 3 of the Peter Hirschfeld article that we read about the “biggest health care premium reduction in American history” that […]

Times-Argus The headline of your Sept. 5 article states, “Shumlin to rely on payroll tax hikes” to fund single payer. However, this headline would be equally accurate if it stated, “Gov. Shumlin to implement the largest single premium decrease in U.S. history.” Indeed, as the article itself makes clear, taxes to fund a health care […]

Times-Argus Gov. Shumlin is correct to state that taxes will have to rise significantly in order to fund the new single-payer health care system. He is also correct when he states that they will replace — and not be added to — the increasingly expensive, unaffordable, confusing and unreliable private insurance premiums, copays and deductibles […]

Randolph Herald I would like to respond to the letter “High Deductibles Bring Savings” in the August 15 edition of The Herald. As someone who has suffered these plans before, I am curious for whom the savings are brought to. It is certainly not the insured. They get to pay both the premiums and the […]