Earlier this month, the Green Mountain Care Board approved a 19.8 percent increase for Blue Cross Blue Shield premiums on Vermont Health Connect individual plans, along with a 22.8 percent increase for small group plans.
This is the third year in a row with double-digit rate increases. As a longtime member of the Vermont Workers’ Center, I’ve been helping to lead the Healthcare is a Human Right campaign since 2008. In 2011, the Vermont Workers’ Center and our partners were instrumental in gaining passage of Vermont’s landmark universal healthcare law that remains in state statute, with its promise unfilled.
As a unionized state employee for 18 years (recently retired) I benefited from a mostly publicly funded, comprehensive health insurance program. Before landing a job with the state, though, I experienced the kinds of struggles to afford healthcare that I hear about when I speak with people around the state. I joined the Vermont Workers’ Center’s Healthcare is a Human Right campaign because I know what it’s like to struggle to afford care, and because I feel a moral imperative to work to extend what state employees have - or better - to everyone in the state.
In the ten years since the governor and legislature abandoned universal healthcare, Vermont’s healthcare crisis has grown exponentially worse. The costs for care and insurance premiums continue to skyrocket. Nine out of fourteen hospitals in the state are operating in the red, with the threat of hospita.