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Dear Fellow Vermonter,
Everyone knows that our health care system – both nationally and in the state of Vermont – is broken, dysfunctional and wildly expensive. The U.S. spends twice as much per person on health care as other wealthy countries, yet we remain the only one not to guarantee health care for all people. Vermonters pay even more.
Despite that huge expenditure, many of our state’s residents are either uninsured or underinsured, we don’t have enough doctors, dentists, mental health care providers or pharmacists, and in one of the oldest states in the country, our home health care programs and nursing homes are under tremendous stress. Now, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Vermont is on the brink of financial collapse, and they have requested another massive premium hike for Vermonters. This outrageously expensive system is economically unsustainable.
In Washington, President Trump and congressional Republicans are moving to cut Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act by $715 billion. This will throw millions of Americans off the health insurance they have and impact nursing homes, community health centers and hospitals. I am doing everything I can to defeat this disastrous bill.
I’m proud that in Vermont, however, there are important initiatives underway to address this crisis. On Monday, I was grateful to be joined by the chairs of the state House and Senate health committees, the chair of the Green Mountain Care Board, and other health care and business leaders to deliver a clear message: The status quo is failing patients, it is failing health care providers, and it is failing small businesses. I hope you’ll take a few moments to listen to what we had to say.
We must invest more in primary health care. When people are able to get to a doctor’s office when they feel sick, they end up getting better sooner and they don’t have to end up in the emergency room. Not only is keeping people healthy the right thing to do – it saves money!
We must train more nurses in Vermont. Every year, our state spends tens of millions on travel nurses to fill the massive nursing shortage. We should expand nursing education programs so more Vermonters can graduate from nursing schools and begin their work in our state.
We need to significantly increase and improve our home health care workforce. Many elderly and disabled Vermonters would rather stay in their homes rather than go into a nursing home, but we don’t have the workforce to take care of these people in their homes. That is unfair to their families, and it is extremely expensive.
We need to lower the costs that individuals and hospitals pay for prescription drugs. Everyone is aware that the cost of prescription drugs is very high. That is also true for hospitals. While we are making some progress in Washington on taking on the greed of the pharmaceutical industry and trying to lower the cost of prescription drugs, we have got to do a lot better job here in Vermont.
Lastly, there is a culture that we have to change. Some hospital executives in Vermont are making ten times more than what the governor makes. That sends a message to the whole system: If you want to make money out of health care, work for the drug and insurance companies and rip off the American people. If you believe that health care is a human right, you don’t need to make ten times more than what the governor makes.
The bottom line: I think we are all in agreement that we have a major crisis and that the status quo is unacceptable. We cannot continue to ignore this crisis. Let’s make Vermont a leader in health care reform.
Sincerely,
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