About 18 months ago, Jack Mayer, Ellen Oxfeld and Michael Palmer began meeting in their local coffee shop to discuss ways that they, as concerned citizens, could improve the health care system in Vermont. They called themselves the Little Seeds, both for the Middlebury cafe where they congregated and for the movement they saw germinating.
With Town Meeting Day ahead on March 3, they are close to seeing the culmination of one of their first big efforts. At least eight Vermont Town Meeting Day agendas ask voters to urge statewide action on universal health care.
The question Mayer, Oxfeld and Palmer put forth asks whether each town should call upon the Vermont Legislature to take up and vote on a bill that proposes a multi-phased implementation of universal primary care in Vermont.
Brandon, Bristol, Cornwall, Middlebury, Putney, Ripton, Salisbury and Weybridge are set to consider the resolution next week. Mayer added that he is optimistic New Haven and Fairfax may also take up the issue on Tuesday.
The bill in question, H.433, outlines a plan for a publicly financed health care program, Green Mountain Care. The program would begin by offering all Vermonters universal primary care and then phase in other services, like dental, vision and maternal health care over a 10-year timeline.
Since its introduction a year ago, the bill has waited on the wall of the House Health Care Committee without receiving attention.
With the internal statehouse “crossover” deadline for bills to receive approval from committees falling a mere 10 days after Town Meeting Day — and with a weeklong legislative hiatus for the local election day — it’s unlikely lawmakers will take action on H.433 this legislative session, Rep. Brian Cina, P/D-Burlington, who introduced the bill, told VTDigger.
Still, he sees a vote on Town Meeting Day as a helpful “litmus test” on Vermonters’ political will for universal health care.
It’s more likely, he said, that the spirit of his universal health care bill may become folded into another bill with more momentum in the Legislature. Specifically, Cina pointed to S.197, which his colleagues in the Senate Health and Welfare Committee are moving forward. That bill strives to make primary care more accessible for those with health insurance.
Rep. Daisy Berbeco, D-Winooski, who also co-sponsored H.433, similarly sees Vermonters’ interest in exploring more affordable care. “Universal care gets brought up, in some form, at least two times a week here. I think we are starting to think about it more seriously,” she said.
In the wake of the Affordable Care Act’s passage in 2010, then-Gov. Peter Shumlin’s administration sought to set up single-payer health care in Vermont, but it eventually floundered, deemed too expensive for the rural state.
Now, federal changes are putting a different type of pressure on the state to seek innovative alternatives to the health care status quo.
Mayer, a pediatrician and one of the “Little Seeds” group, said that he, Oxfeld and Palmer felt galvanized in their efforts to seek universal care following the congressional budget resolution that imposes new Medicaid eligibility requirements. That legislation is expected to result in more than 30,000 Vermonters losing Medicaid coverage.
When the enhanced tax credits for those buying insurance off the Affordable Care Act marketplace lapsed at the end of 2025, it seemed to heighten support for Mayer’s local efforts to put universal care on the Town Meeting Day docket, he said.
“The eagerness with which people signed on to this petition struck me,” he said. “I think everybody is feeling the pinch now.”
As a primary care physician, Mayer has seen the cost of forgoing early preventative care. Earlier this month, Mayer wrote a commentary in VTDigger about a young patient whose meningitis had spread, causing permanent brain damage. Had the patient’s mother felt like she could afford a primary care visit for her son, he could have received a preventive vaccine or antibiotics earlier and lived without the consequences of the infection, Mayer said.
“That shook me to my core,” he said, getting emotional. “I would say it’s one of the saddest days of my entire career as a pediatrician.”
He sees fundamental health care as an essential part of town business: “It’s not a commodity, it’s a public good. It’s like roads, clean water, public education.”
He hopes that if the people lead on this, their legislators will follow.
Kevin O’Connor contributed reporting.
Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated one type of care that would be later phased into the Green Mountain Care program.
