A Doctor’s Push for Single-Payer Health Care for All Finds Traction in Vermont

[cal04]

By ABBY GOODNOUGH
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/22/us/22vermont.html?seid=auto&smid=tw-nytimes&pagewanted=all

Many people move to Vermont in search of a slower pace; Dr. Deb Richter came in 1999 to work obsessively toward a far-fetched goal.

She wanted Vermont to become the first state to adopt a single-payer health care system, run and paid for by the government, with every resident eligible for a uniform benefit package. So Dr. Richter, a buoyant primary care doctor from Buffalo who had given up on New York’s embracing such a system, started lining up speaking engagements and meeting with lawmakers, whom she found more accessible than their New York counterparts.

“I wrote a letter to the editor, and the speaker of the House called me up to talk about it,” Dr. Richter, 56, recalled recently. “It was astounding. In New York, I couldn’t even get an appointment with my legislator.”

Twelve years later, Dr. Richter will watch Gov. Peter Shumlin, a Democrat, sign a bill on Thursday that sets Vermont on a path toward a single-payer system — the nation’s first such experiment — thanks in no small part to her persistence. Though scores of people pushed for the bill, she was the most actively involved doctor — “the backbone,” Mr. Shumlin has said, of a grass-roots effort that helped sway the Democratic Legislature to pass it this spring even as other states were suing to block the less ambitious federal health care law.

[Name removed]

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[Wilms]

2. THAT would probably be an improvement over our current system.

http://www.perrspectives.com/blog/archives/001135.htm

[madinmaryland]

3. Meanwhile in the United States...

Over 50 million have NO health insurance and likely get NO health care, millions more have grossly inadequate health care, and we rely on Enron type companies with NO regulation to dole out health care.

[xchrom]

4. +1

[Highway61]

9. Well now....

Big K & R to you :thumbsup:

[eagertolearn]

6. Meanwhile in America many people are not insured or underinsured

and are going bankrupt even if they have health care because of our current system. I America one daughter waited 6 hours in an Eugene Oregon ER to get a little Novocaine and 6 stitches on an eyebrow wound. When she went back to the ER 10 days later she waited another 4 hours to get the stitches removed. The whole bill was $1600. They actually charged her for removing the stitches but we got that removed. While in Germany my other daughter fell off her bike, got right into a very nice clinic and had a doctor and two nurses cleaning and stitching her up right away. 26 stitches, dressings for several days, antibiotics, tetanus shot, some pain pills all for a total of $75 that we insisted on paying. Our exchange student from Norway nursed a bad hip all her life and was pretty hard on it when she was here. When she got back they said yes she needed it replaced. They gave her a choice of flying 3 hours away by plane to Oslo or waiting in her own town of Tromso for 8 months. She waited the 8 months (working a job that she could sit at) and had the surgery and 3 months of rehab with her own room at the hospital (she actually went home every night) and her dad said if they had had to pay for that they would never of been able to pay it off. Because they pay into a nationalized health care system they didn't have any out of pocket expenses. They pay almost 50% in taxes when you add up the food tax and everything else but that covers health care and schools 100%. We can keep talking about the long waits in these other countries but what about no health care and long waits in America. Our other exchange student from Germany is studying to be a doctor and is very excited!

[MedicalAdmin]

8. GB doesn't have single payer.

They have a massively underfunded single employer system. And they still beat the shit out of us in terms of health outcomes.

Got any other myths to share?

[southernyankeebelle]

5. I pray this is just the beginning and will sweep across this country.

[eagertolearn]

7. All doctors in health care for the right reason should be fighting for this!