Letters

Burlington Free Press: Comment & Debate Deborah Richter, President, Vermont Health Care for All Praise has been heaped on the 120-some page report issued by the Harvard health economist, William Hsiao, and his working group. Words like historic, ground-breaking, and masterful are used, and since I entirely agree I will put them to use as […]

Boston Globe I APPLAUD The Globe for showcasing Vermont’s single-payer “laboratory’’ in its Jan. 2 editorial “Vermont: Creating a singular health system.’’ As a third-year medical student at Cambridge Health Alliance, I’ve found that it doesn’t take long to see that the current system is insufficient. The shortcomings leave patients whom I follow longitudinally with […]

Burlington Free Press On Dec. 10, I heard Sen. Sanders, during a filibuster in opposition to the Obama-Republican tax bill, read letters he had received from Americans. Each one told a story of hardship and struggle to make ends meet. One person was a part time worker in Stowe who related that his hours had […]

Burlington Free Press Even though the United States is a signatory of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, whose anniversary we observed this Dec. 10, it still treats health care as a commodity instead of a human right. Everyone needs health care, regardless of their lifestyle. In particular, everyone needs primary and preventive care, which […]

Burlington Free Press  I am writing to you on Dec. 10, the anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Here in Vermont we still do not yet have the right to health care even though every other industrialized country recognizes healthcare as a human right. Everyone should be entitled to receive the health care […]

Burlington Free Press Senate bill S. 88 clearly states that the commission shall consist of no members with a relationship to health providers or insurers. Jim Leddy as president of AARP Vermont obviously has such a relationship, volunteer or not. Since one of the designs mandated in S. 88 is a single-payer-type health care plan, […]

Rutland Herald Although Jim Leddy, the representative of the AARP members to the national organization, is a principled man, one question not yet answered is “Why appoint him?” AARP is a billion-dollar-a-year business, with $600 million of its revenue generated by merchandising — and AARP gets 10 percent on the premiums it generates through policy […]

Shap Smith’s appointment against the law (RH) Naming Leddy violates law Shap Smith, speaker of the Vermont House of Representatives and a lawyer practicing in Burlington, is not above the law and therefore will need to rescind his appointment of Jim Leddy, president of AARP in Vermont, a health insurer, to the state’s Health Care […]

Need a good health planner (Rutland Herald) Now that S.88 has become law, we will need a good architect to design a health care system for Vermont that is universal and can contain costs. Your editorial of May 23 mentions professor William Hsiao of the Harvard University School of Public Health. Professor Hsiao testified before […]

(Rutland Herald) The Vermont Legislature recently passed S.88, a health care reform bill. Vermont and Massachusetts have led the nation in health care reforms. These reforms have not been perfect, but are steps in the right direction. The 2010 federal health care bill was based in part on the Massachusetts model (signed by Mitt Romney) […]