It’s good to know what the legislative health committees in the Vermont House and Vermont Senate plan to focus on. Yes, it’s good to know that neither committee’s stated plan involves dealing with the state’s crisis in health care, which I had thought would be a priority for committees tasked with health.
Why would I ever have expected that “health” committees would concern themselves with the fact that the Vermont Department of Financial Regulation reportedly says there are around 30,000 Vermonters with medical debt in collections and tens of thousands more who are paying down medical bills that have not reached collections? That would be a minimum of 50,000 Vermonters with medical debt, the majority of whom are in medical debt despite having health insurance.
Or with the fact that Vermont’s 2021 survey reported that 187,000 Vermonters under age 65 were “underinsured” (as were another 40,000 age 65 and over), unable to afford the deductibles and co-pays on the insurance they already paid for?
If these sound to you like problems that legislative health committees should be working hard on, let your legislators know — especially the legislators on the two health committees.
Lodiza LePore
Bennington
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