Last night, the seats of the Vermont House Chamber were filled not with the august members of the General Assembly (though plenty of them were present), but with Vermonters from around the state who had come to speak their minds about legislative proposals for universal health care.
Representatives from the Vermont League of Women Voters, the Vermont Workers Center, the Vermont Psychiatric Association spoke in support of H.100, H.491 and S.88, bills that would change the way health care is delivered and move Vermont toward a single-payer system.
Hundreds of people attended the three-hour hearing held by the Vermont House Health Committee and the Senate Health and Welfare Committee. Many were wearing red t-shirts from the Vermont Workers Center’s Health Care is a Human Right campaign.
Seven Days reported that by 8 p.m. only half of the people present who came to speak had had an opportunity to give testimony. The three-hour hearing was slated to end at 9 p.m.
The witnesses who spoke came from Brattleboro and Bennington, the Northeast Kingdom, Rutland, and Chittenden County. A broad spectrum of Vermonters gave testimony: Office workers, doctors, psychiatrists, retirees, a town road crew worker and many people with disabilities.
Most were in favor of a universal health care system. A handful of people warned that extending coverage under a universal plan would bankrupt the state and impinge on Vermonters’ freedoms.
What follows is a sampling of quotes and video footage taken from the hearing.
Sam Liss, of the Vermont Statewide Independent Living Council: People with disabilities need a single payer health care system in order to live the American dream.
Amanda Calder, Shelburne: Eligibility requirements are too complex.
Sheila Cohn, Montpelier: Insurance companies are driving the cost of care up.
Dr. Peggy Carey: A fair system is a continuous single payer system that profits people’s health and not insurance companies.
Margaret Dunne, Rutland: Health insurance companies exist to turn a profit.
Angela from Burlington: Where is all this money going to come from to pay for health care?
Bill Day: Government-run, single-payer monopoly will take health care away from us.
Roger Caroll of Brattleboro: Government mandates have pushed health insurances costs higher. Why universal health care now in the middle of a recession?
Dr. Sue Deppe: 30 percent of health care resources wasted on administration.
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We already have a single payer system in place–for repairing our state highways. Is anyone advocating an employer-sponsored private insurance system with giant administrative costs, enormous executive compensation, premiums, copays, deductibles, and pre-existing condition denials as a way of treating our potholes? Why should we not treat the people of Vermont with as much dignity as we treat our pavement? Heath care for our people is at least as much a public good and a human right as health care for our roads.
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FYI, psychiatrists are doctors who went to the same medical schools and attended all the same classes as family practitioners, internists, pediatricians, surgeons, etc. It is redundant to list them separately.
Any thoughts as to why it is that so many people don’t realize this?
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Because the insurance companies have muscled in on health care to reap the rewards. They turn around to tell us that it is socialism to want a single-payer, therefore un-American, instilling fear of “big government” into any movements to reform and so many Americans will automatically believe it.
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“Dr. Sue Deppe: 30 percent of health care resources wasted on administration.”
If Dr. Deppe assumes that single payer or any other health care system will have no administration costs, we hope she’s better at medicine than accounting.
The next question, of course, is without insurance companies as employers, what jobs are available for all these people who manage billing and administration today? Will many of them become government employees at taxpayer expense?