Letters

Rutland Herald Thanks to Mimi Morton for refuting John McClaughry’s attack on Vermont’s coming single-payer health care system. Of course there will not be an easy transition from a system run for insurance company profit to one run for the benefit and improved health of all the people. Uncertainties and obstacles on the path are […]

Rutland Herald John McClaughry’s libertarian rant against Vermont’s future single-payer health care system (Rutland Herald, April 3) is out of touch with contemporary economic realities. In McClaughry’s 1 percent fantasy, we don’t need universal, publicly funded health care because we can and should obtain private health care for ourselves. If we can’t afford it, too […]

The Commons Online In the 1970s, I lived and worked in England, and was in the National Health Service. I had good care and never had to worry about whether I’d be able to afford it. I am thrilled that Vermont is moving in the direction of universal health care and wish it could happen […]

Rutland Herald Comments in the recent Times Argus article with the headline “Uninsured drop nearly a third,” there were two appalling findings from the Department of Finance survey that were omitted from the article: — In the 2012 survey, 15.6 percent of Vermonters, or 96,000-plus, had forgone health care due to cost. One reason many […]

Rutland Herald Your Feb. 25 article (“Self-funded insurance complicates single payer”) states that self-funded insurance plans (covered by the ERISA law) might complicate Vermont’s path to single payer. In fact, as Robin Lunge, director of health care reform for the Shumlin administration, correctly points out in that article, there is no legal barrier to participation […]

Rutland Herald The Shumlin administration made the right call in not advancing a detailed single-payer financing plan at this time. If Jeff Wennberg and his Vermonters for Health Care Freedom would bother to actually read the UMass study, the last few pages give them the reason why — we don’t yet have the information necessary […]

Rutland Herald On Jan. 24, the Shumlin administration presented their report on the financing for a single-payer health care system in Vermont. This report demonstrates, as all previous reports on single-payer have done, that a single-payer type health care system will simultaneously save Vermont substantial amounts of money while providing better care as well as […]

Rutland Herald Insurance offered through Vermont’s health benefit exchange is not part of Vermont’s future single payer. Required by the 2010 federal Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”), the exchange sells private plans for those needing insurance. Also, Catamount and VHAP will cease, and Medicaid will be offered there, to cover those needing insurance in 2014, three […]

Burlington Free Press The Shumlin administration presented a report on financing a single payer health care system to the Legislature on Jan. 24. It once again demonstrates that we can provide comprehensive health care to all Vermonters at less overall cost. This is the latest in a long line of official reports that has come […]

Rutland Herald Predictably, Jeff Wennberg of Vermonters for Health Care Freedom, in a recent Times Argusarticle, is trying to spread fear and mistrust, once again, of the Green Mountain Care “single payer” health care plan due to be implemented in 2017. For example, the latest report by the UMass medical group that Mr. Wennberg calls […]