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 hospital bankruptcy closures imminent.
Close to 30,000 Vermonters have been kicked off Medicaid in the past year, forcing them to buy into high-deductible, expensive, marketplace insurance plans. Many must simply go without healthcare or insurance because they can’t afford it. Everyone, from policy experts and consultants to legislators, healthcare providers, and the average person seeking care, agrees the system is failing us.
In the words of consultant Dr. Bruce Hamory, “the healthcare system in Vermont, unfortunately, is badly broken.” While bold action is needed, meaningful political leadership is severely lacking.
During this year’s legislative session, the House Healthcare Committee advanced a significant and long-overdue proposal to substantially expand Medicaid, while increasing reimbursements to providers to ensure that hospitals and medical practices remain solvent. The bill was introduced with the support of 80 representatives and 14 senators. Listening to testimony before the House Healthcare Committee last winter, I heard a wide range of constituencies voice their support for the concept, including representatives of the Scott administration, provider organizations and patient advocates.
I listened to gut-wrenching stories from healthcare providers who can’t afford healthcare for themselves or who worry about their ability to stay in practice and care for patients. I heard Vermonters speak about the stress of living with constant uncertainty about whether they will be able to remain on Medicaid or afford increasing insurance costs while working to support their families. In the end, this effort to expand Medicaid was too ambitious for legislative leadership, who declined to include even a study of Medicaid expansion in the state budget.
An updated study of the economics of publicly financed, universal healthcare was never on the table. We are tired of the excuses for a lack of action that is long overdue. The excuse we hear repeatedly for why we cannot move forward with universal, publicly financed healthcare is that “we can’t afford it”.
Yet this week the Green Mountain Care Board approved double-digit increases in private health insurance premiums for the second year in a row. This is completely unaffordable for the vast majority of Vermonters and unsustainable for our healthcare system. According to an analysis commissioned by the governor in 2014 (see Table 19), universal healthcare would actually have increased income for 93% of Vermont families by shifting healthcare spending from private insurance premiums to tax-funded public financing while controlling costs.
What does it mean to say “we can’t afford” universal healthcare? It means we willingly accept that Vermonters will be forced to delay care, suffer, and even die due to lack of access to healthcare. The refusal to act in the face of this crisis may seem abstract, but in fact, it amounts to policy violence that causes unnecessary suffering. So many of us are affected by this healthcare crisis or are outraged by the moral failure of a system that rations healthcare according to the ability to pay.
Our collapsing healthcare system necessitates an all-hands-on-deck moment — we need a sustained effort of people impacted by this crisis to compel our elected government to respond to the will of the people. On Monday, September 23, we’re holding a Rally and Poor People’s Trial of the Healthcare System on the steps of the Vermont Supreme Court. Join us at 12 p.
m. in Montpelier or tune in via Facebook or Instagram livestream to share your healthcare story — for more, visit ..
