Vermont Moves Toward a Victory for Healthcare as a Human Right

The Vermont Workers Center and people from across Vermont have been leading a charge to ensure adequate healthcare is guaranteed to people across the state. Vermonters are now one step closer to that goal, with legislation now in place to start designing a healthcare system with a public option, and possibly a single-payer program. 

The progress that Vermont is now making would establish wider reaching Healthcare legislation than the recently passed federal legislation, and could set an example for states across the country. 

Vermont Workers Center is organizing a rally on May 1st at the State Capitol in Montpelier. For information about the rally watch the PSA above. To learn more about the legislation read the news coverage below.

Media Mobilizing Project will be in Vermont on May 1st covering the historic action to ensure that Healthcare is a Human Right.

Vermont Legislature Votes to Begin Designing 'Single-Payer' System

http://www.cnbc.com/id/36746400

by the Associated Press

April 23, 2010

MONTPELIER, Vt. - Vermont lawmakers made clear Friday that recently enacted federal health care reform did not go far enough toward a public model, passing legislation that could bring to the state the "public option" health insurance rejected by Washington or even a Canadian-style single-payer system.

The House version calls for that as well as a parallel design of a system with a public option for health insurance, meaning a system in which a health insurance program offered by the government would compete against those offered by private companies. The House's version also would expand previously enacted reform efforts.

Either system would require federal approval.

The Senate focuses on single-payer as the goal, but also calls for two alternative designs. Differences will have to be worked out in a conference committee of three members from each chamber, and it's not clear what Gov. Jim Douglas, a Republican, will do with the bill.

[…]

Sen. Doug Racine, chairman of the Senate Health and Welfare Committee, said the Senate version of the bill focused mainly on designing a single-payer system, with the two still to be determined alternatives. "It's just a difference in emphasis" between the House and Senate versions, he said.

Vermont's efforts to create a public option or a single-payer insurance system could run into trouble because either would require the federal government's OK so the state could continue receiving Medicaid funding from Washington, Racine said.

But Racine, a Democratic candidate for governor, said inaction is not an option. He said the state's health care costs are expected to grow from about $5 billion in 2009 to $6 billion in 2012. That $1 billion difference about equals the state's entire general fund budget, he said.

"We need to make basic, structural reform if we're going to get costs under control," he said.

© 2010 Associated Press

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