How Vermont really got universal health care

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Most mainstream commentary on "Green Mountain Care" has tended to focus on the progressive politics of the state's leaders. The Atlantic reported that it was, "the culmination of decades of work by progressive politicians in the state." There was also, predictably, a fair amount of talk about Bernie Sanders, Vermont's popular progressive Senator, who had been advocating for a single-payer system for decades.

"I am very proud that my home state of Vermont is now taking big steps to lead the nation in health care by moving forward on a plan to establish a single payer health-care system that puts the interests of patients over chasing profits," Sanders wrote after Act 48 passed, in a Guardian piece. In the most surprising of moves, The New York Times (preferred paper of liberals who still blame Bush's election on Ralph Nader) ran an op-ed by Molly Worthen, saying a great many nice things about Vermont's most popular third party. "Mr. Shumlin is a Democrat, and the bill's passage is a credit to his party," wrote Worthen, "Yet a small upstart spent years building support for reform and nudging the Democrats left: the Vermont Progressive Party."

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Peter Shumlin had, narrowly, won the gubernatorial election of 2010, snagging 49.44 percent of the vote, while his Republican opponent got 47.69 percent. The Progressive Party agreed to sit out the election if Shumlin backed universal health care. "In the end Shumlin became [the Democrats'] candidate having campaigned on single payer," Chris Pearson, Leader of the Vermont Progressive Party in the Vermont House of Representatives, told me, "He narrowly won . . . so it's easy to assume that a Progressive running would have made his roughly 4,000-vote victory impossible."

Elected with clear expectations, and a sizable campaign gripping the state, Shumlin, the man who had once told organizers health care wasn't a plausible goal, began taking the necessary steps toward achieving single-payer and, in spring of 2011, Vermont saw its biggest health care victory yet. If everything goes according to plan, and the fight doesn't let up, it shouldn't remain their biggest.

"I would say that without the grassroots organizing to pressure the legislature, the bill would have continued to stall," Jake Williams told Truthout. Yet, when Shumlin passed the health care bill, he didn't bother thanking the Health Care is a Human Right Campaign, the Vermont Workers' Center, or the many activists who had fought so hard. Members of the grassroots effort stood behind Shumlin at the press conference, but they were cropped out of the next day's front page photos. They're used to it.

http://truth-out.org/news/item/24639-how-vermont-got-a-single-payer-health-care-bill-a-non-electoral-history