(Continuing the policy of promoting diaries from officeholders and officeseekers – promoted by odum)
I am excited to tell you about something I’ve been working on for several weeks. All of us candidates have been saying how essential it is to achieve universal access to affordable health care — and I’ve been figuring out how to actually make that happen.
The escalating cost of our current system is crippling our state, our families and our businesses. Health care in Vermont will cost $1 billion more in 2012 than it does today if current trends continue — this is a crisis, and we cannot let it continue.
That is why today, I introduced a revised version of S.88 — so that we can design the system that will deliver health care to Vermonters, and answer all of the questions that need to be answered to implement this new system. My bill calls for the state to hire independent advisors, who will be overseen by a panel of Vermonters, to provide the state with a “menu of options.” These advisors will design three different health care systems — fully design them, not just study them — and deliver back to the legislature a full implementation plan for each of the three possible systems.
This will not be easy. Change comes with uncertainty and risks. But the option of doing nothing is simply not acceptable. We are now paying the price of a broken system, and that price will only go up. The time to move forward is now. Please join me and help me to build the system we need.
There is more information on my website, and when you visit you can sign on as a “citizen co-sponsor” of the bill. I’ll also be posting a copy of the bill as introduced on the site very soon. It will change as it moves through the process – probably several times – but I am committed to the goal of access to affordable, quality health care for every Vermonter.
I hope you will read the bill, sign on, and work with me to create the new system that will lead the way to true reform.
http://dougracine.com/about/po…
Doug Racine
Thanks so much Senator Racine. As you said, change will come hard and there will be much resistance. It is so difficult sometimes to see why our governing bodies, state and federal, but especially state, have not done anything about this health care mess. For so long our federal government has been by the corporations for the corporations. I am tired of constantly trying to please the corporations.
I was at the Jan. 12th hearings and remember that man that had the heart attack and kept weighing the two awful decisions of whether to die or to risk bankruptcy by going to the hospital; or that fellow from Montpelier that had to negotiate with the hospital for the price to save his life.
As has been said, health care is the civil rights battle of our time. Thanks for at least taking this first very bold step in Vermont.
universal health care is not just the right thing to do; it’s the smart thing for Vermont’s economic future.
Is this going to be three different kinds of single payer systems or is the goal to “diversify” our options… as in fashion it more like a Massachusetts model…
I guarantee if you come out swinging for single payer with a tangible bill you will win the primary. Enough democrats are already parsing their words. Make yourself stand out and you will have it.