update: at least one paper (The Caledonian Record) has the wrong date listed for this event. The event is definitely this Wednesday, regardless of what any local papers might say.
For those unaware, the Healthcare is a Human Right campaign is having a rally at the statehouse, bringing in the first day of the new legislative session. The plan is to deliver a petition supporting universal health care to the legislators and governor-elect Shumlin:
Vermonters Converge on Statehouse to Demand Universal Healthcare & Deliver Thousands of Petition Signatures to Legislators
When: 12:30pm, Wednesday, January 5, 2011
Where: Cedar Creek Room, Statehouse, Montpelier
Per the Vermont Worker’s Center, reposting a Rutland Herald Editorial:
As Peter Shumlin prepares to take office this week, a sampling of the challenges facing him will already have gathered at the Statehouse in Montpelier.
The Health Care Is a Human Right campaign is planning to stage a rally Wednesday, bringing together people from around the state to demand a single-payer health care system, the kind that Shumlin has said he supports.
Shumlin will be inaugurated as our next governor Thursday, and how he responds to the expectations of single-payer health care advocates will be an early test of his leadership.
Already he has accepted the premises of a single-payer system, and he has argued that cost savings achieved through single-payer would help solve Vermont’s budget dilemma.
Vermont has a unique opportunity here to push healthcare in the direction of single payer and away from the piecemeal approach we’ve been using in which the poor get covered through an entirely separate system from the rest of us, even other people seeking public assistance with health care via Green Mountain Care. With a new governor who has pledged to push for single payer, we’ve got a chance, now more than ever, of finding our way into a new system and leading the country away from for-profit, you’re too ill to be covered, screw you if you don’t have the proper resources, health care. This rally will serve as a reminder of campaign promises and a way to ensure that the legislature know how critically urgent this work is.
I’ll be there. Who else is with me?