Any future vision for health care must be viewed through the eyes of those who need it, use it and provide it, not solely through the eyes of those who administer it or profit from it.
Prop 5 is as important to men as it is to the women we may love. This is not a feminist moment. It is a human one.
Every town in Vermont must look to the stability of its local paper and come together to ensure its continued success. Our democracy depends on the daylight journalism provides.
I want to focus on real needs, such as our own and our children’s dependency on a healthy environment — the true gift to our descendants. And we can all pursue healthier options for celebrating this holiday season.
Our founders never envisioned “social media” that can discourage public service, erode civil society, and foment insurrection. It’s time to carefully craft legal limitations on hate speech and threats of violence that often lead to real violence.
Let’s perpetuate equitable business opportunity, but also acknowledge that the concentration of wealth among fewer and fewer and the commensurate rise in abject and middle-class poverty will be our country’s undoing.
Without adequate funding and staffing, the community-based system will wither and our children will suffer. The massive federal infusion of capital headed to Vermont is an opportunity to shore up this vital infrastructure.
What will the state’s leaders do to solve the 80% of health problems that range far beyond the health care system?
UVM Health Network now has virtual control over how the money from Medicare, Medicaid and commercial insurers is spent. It will in essence be paying itself via its accountable care organization (Vermont’s sole ACO implementing the state’s all-payer model).
Today’s Republican Party seems to define itself sadly by what it opposes, defaulting to an adversarial position on anything proposed by Vermont’s dominant Democrats.
Our own basic ignorance of government’s purpose and function and our inability to differentiate fact from political propaganda could sound our democracy’s death knell.
I have always revered the Vermont motto because it challenges us to seek balance between “freedom and unity” — between me/mine and us/ours. I am grateful for my freedoms, but also for my community.
Only now, with the severe climate impacts from this exploitation hitting home, are we beginning to understand what the Abenaki have known for years.
If we don’t join together to reimagine public education as a cost-efficient institution that fulfills our constitutional obligation to provide a free and effective education to our citizens — one that embraces change — we’re flunking this test.
