Time to walk the talk
Toolbox
Published: October 6, 2009
I would like to thank Walter Carpenter and Liz Zundel and others for their riveting testimony on how our current health care system has failed them at the recent "Healthcare is a Human Right" forum held by the Vermont Workers Center at Montpelier High School. Moreover, all of the Washington County legislators who attended agreed that everyone, without exception, is entitled to comprehensive quality healthcare. In other words, universal health care. Now how do we do this?
There are two bills in the Vermont House and Senate, H.100 and S.88, that call for a "Single Payer" type system that would result in universal coverage for all Vermonters regardless of employment status or personal wealth. Every developed country in the world has a form of universal health care, all have longer life expectancies than the United States, and all spend approximately half as much per capita. Also, enormous medical expenses are now the number one cause of personal bankruptcy in the United States. This is an obscene situation.
During the next legislative session, we must demand that these bills are brought out of committee for passage. The vested money interests in the health care system were out in force in an attempt to block any meaningful reform so it is essential that the public lobby respond in kind to prevent these corporate interests from killing the above bills. It is not enough for our elected officials just to agree in principle that everyone should have quality health care. As one of the legislators at the forum who has been a proponent of past reform efforts said of his fellow colleagues, "It's time for us to walk the talk!"
As Vermont was the first to abolish slavery, we can be the first to abolish our health care system that excludes so many and has been held captive by special corporate interests.
Jerry Kilcourse
Montpelier
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