FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
April 7, 2010
CONTACTS: Doug Racine 802-343-5417 / Amy Shollenberger 802-793-1114
www.dougracine.com
Healthy Vermont Bill Passes in Senate
Bill calls for custom-designed health care system
MONTPELIER, VT — With an overwhelming 28-2 vote, the Senate today passed the Healthy Vermont bill (S.88). Senator Doug Racine (D-Chittenden) and the Health and Welfare Committee brought the bill to the Senate floor.
The bill empowers the Health Care Reform Commission to hire a team of experts to custom design a health care system for Vermont. The experts will bring at least three options to the governor and legislature early next year, and one of those options must be a “single payer” plan.
“This bill recognizes that we need help to take the next step in health care reform,” Racine explained on the Senate floor. “We want to focus expert attention on this issue and make sure we have a health care system that is specially designed to meet the needs of Vermonters.”
The bill represents an agreement between the Health and Welfare Committee and the Appropriations Committee. Racine worked with the committees to reach consensus on the key elements of the bill. “It’s important that there is buy-in and commitment to moving this process forward,” he noted. “Change can be threatening, but right now, it is riskier for us to do nothing at all because health care costs are escalating at an alarming rate.”
The overall goal of the bill is “to ensure universal access and coverage for health services for all Vermonters.”
The Senate will give final approval to the bill tomorrow, and then it will go on to the House for consideration.
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Doug Racine is a candidate for Governor and a Vermont state senator, chairing the Health and Welfare Committee and serving on the Economic Development Committee. He is serving his 7th term in the Senate, including 4 years as President Pro Tem, and he also served 6 years as Lieutenant Governor. He is a lifelong Vermonter and a small business owner. More information at www.dougracine.com.
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Thanks so much, Doug. It is a small step, but a significant one. We need to get it through the house and, then, if the guv axes it like he probably will, to jump it into law over him. I was there today when your bill sailed through by a trouncing majority of 28-2. To be honest, I thought it would be so much closer and was crossing my fingers.
Now, if we can pass these next hurdles, Vermonters will no longer need to fear the terror of financial catastrophe that a serious illness can cause, be denied, be afraid to change jobs and lose health insurance, and all the rest of the inhumanity that our system inflicts on its sufferers. To think that years down the road, tea party conservatives will fight to defend this as their right, just like they do medicare/medicaid now. Much congratulations to you, Doug, on a fantastic job of guiding this bill through the heavy rapids of all the committees and other logjams to such a vote as this one today.
With luck, it will go further. WE have just begun.
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Congratulations, residents of Vermont. My fingers are crossed that you’ll get a comprehensive and universal single-payer health care plan, and show the rest of the country *how it’s done.* May you be the first of many. I wish my state of IL would follow your lead.
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Hello Deborah:
Wow, people from Illinois are reading the Vt.Digger:) That’s wild:)
Thanks for your wishes. We are trying hard. Senator Racine really did a fabulous job yesterday. if we can get this passed, future generations will have him, Senator Shumlin, and Bartlett to thank for what happened. We are trying hard to be the first. We have been close so many times. It is such a struggle. Now, if we can just get it through the house. One more fight.
It’s nice to know that people in other parts of the nation are looking this way with hope.