I thank Mr. Emerson Lynn for his commentary “Why Green Mountain Care Board [GMCB] had to take on UVMMC (Messenger, September 19, 2025).” It has long been past time for that and I wholeheartedly agree with Mr. Lynn’s summary of what actions the GMCB took with UVMMC and why it had to take them.
Yet, I would like to clarify one point in Mr. Lynn’s commentary. This concerns Mr. Sunny Eappen’s sudden resignation from his position as president and CEO of UVMMC/UVMHN and the pressures exerted on the Boards of Trustees that forced it. While the trustees for these two entities certainly made this happen, they were only reacting to the inevitable. They did this only after Owen Foster, the GMCB’s chair, gave his “blistering assessment of how UVMMC and UVMHN are being run and what the impact is on Vermont’s health care system…”
This “blistering assessment” resulted from the blistering fury of the we-the- Vermonters over the corporate shenanigans of UVMMC and UVMHN, listed in Mr. Lynn’s commentary. These practices have cost Vermont millions of dollars that we pay in fees, premiums, rates, and taxes while they have cut our services and handed out sweet bonuses from our money to the already well-compensated CEOs. We should never forget that we provided the groundswell for the blistering forces that finally dethroned Mr. Eappen and the GMCB’s chastising of UVMMC/UVMHN.Mr. Lynn is right when he said, “Things have to change.” This change, however, has to be more than just a few resignations and the spanking of an institution trying to become a monopoly . The system that produced this is still in place. Before long, after the furor has died down and the regulators looking elsewhere, another Sunny Eappen or John Brumsted (Eappen’s predecessor) will come along and we’ll find ourselves in the same place again.
This change has to be total. It has to be all the way through the so-called system, like what was envisioned with the missed opportunity of our Act 48. It will most likely be this same blistering fury from us over our healthcare being treated as a lucrative cash cow for a few that will finally force this change to a publicly funded system.
Walt Carpenter