The Vermont Breakthrough! How a Human Rights Movement Is Winning a Healthcare System that Puts People First
Healthcare Is a Human Right Campaign
Check out our brand new Vermont Can Lead the Way! campaign!
The Vermont Workers' Center launched the grassroots Healthcare is a Human Right (HCHR) Campaign in 2008 to make Vermont the first state in the country with a universal healthcare system.
Before we launched the Campaign, we talked to thousands of Vermonters who shared heart-breaking stories of illness, bankruptcy, and even death as a result of the broken healthcare system. We realized that for too long, Vermonters have been suffering under a system which treats our healthcare as commodity and not a human right. We saw that for too long, crucial decisions about our healthcare system have been made by a handful of powerful insurance companies and their lobbyists.
In 2008, we were told that universal healthcare was politically impossible in Vermont, but after organizing in communities across the state to build a groundswell of grassroots power, we have proven that universal healthcare is politically possible--Vermonters are ready for a universal healthcare system!
As a result of our organizing in every county, Vermont enacted Act 48, the country's first universal healthcare system.
The importance of this victory cannot be understated. If Vermont can actually implement universal healthcare, they can lead the way for states across the country to do the same. As you are reading this letter, people in Maryland, California, Oregon, New York, and Maine are working together on using strategies from the Healthcare is a Human Right campaign in their states. It is already happening.
However, the struggle isn't over! Insurance companies and their lobbyists are pouring milions of dollars into our little state to keep us caught under their broken system.
We need all the help we can get to make sure that we continue on our historic path to universal healthcare. We believe Vermont Can Lead the Way--will you join us?
UPDATE: January 30, 2013. Check out our analysis of Governor Shumlin's Healthcare Financing Report here: http://www.workerscenter.org/news/our-analysis-administrations-healthcare-financing-report
If you had any doubt that there are lots of Vermonters who are ready for a healthcare system that meets human rights principles, check out this video and see all of the faces of the many Vermonters who stand together to make this a reality in our state!
VIDEO: Vermont Can Lead the Way (8 min, 2010) Documenting the history of this grassroots campaign
VIDEO: A People's Struggle: Video Update (4 min, 2011)
PSA VIDEO: "Universality" check it out here
What We've Done: Campaign timeline and highlights
5 Lessons Article published in In These Times