Hamilton Davis, former managing editor of the Burlington Free Press, talks with Mark Johnson of WDEV about the difficulties the Shumlin administration will face as it embarks on the development of plans to control health care costs as it moves toward a single-payer health care system that will give Vermont residents universal access to medical care.
Listen to part 1 of Johnson’s April 26 interview with Davis.
Listen to part 2 of the interview.
Davis has been studying health care reform in Vermont and the United States for 30 years. In the early 1980s, he produced a long television documentary on John Wennberg’s small area variation work in Vermont; he subsequently extended this research to several other states, including Maine, Massachusetts, Iowa, and California.
In the late 1980s, Davis served as chairman of the former Hospital Data Council, and in 1988 to 1990, he was special counsel to former Gov. Madeleine Kunin for health policy. As a member of the Vermont House of Representatives, he was a conferee on Vermont’s first health care reform bill; he also served on the late Gov. Richard Snelling’s blue ribbon commission on health care reform. In the mid-1990s, he was a member of the senior management team that directed the integration of the Medical Center Hospital of Vermont, University Health Center and the UVM medical college into Fletcher Allen Health Care.
Davis is writing a series of stories about the state’s latest health care reform effort. Read Long road ahead for single-payer health care system.
