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By James Haslam, on May 25th, 2011
The Vermont Worker’s Center invites you to tune into a special presentation on Vermont’s new universal health care law, to be signed by Governor Shumlin on May 26 at 10am. As a direct result of a highly energized and organized grassroots people’s movement for the human right to healthcare, Vermont has become the first state in the country to pass a bill for a universal, publicly financed healthcare system that commits to providing healthcare as a public good.
Join the Vermont Workers Center/JwJ at the Vermont Statehouse Room 11 at 9:00AM E.S.T. Thursday, May 26, 2011 or tune into the live stream here.
Immediately before the bill signing ceremony in the Vermont Statehouse, the Healthcare Is a Human Right Campaign will give a presentation to the press and the public, live-streamed online to a national audience, to explain the significance of this new law and provide a human rights assessment of its key provisions. Leading members of the Campaign will also look ahead at the challenges Vermonters face as powerful special interests, led by the deep-pocketed insurance industry, gear up to derail the transition to universal healthcare over the next few years.
The Vermont Worker’s Center
Continue reading Live Streamed Press Conference on Signing of Vermont Universal Healthcare Bill H.202
By James Haslam, on March 31st, 2011
On Thursday, March 24, members of the grassroots Healthcare Is a Human Right Campaign cheered on as the Vermont House of Representatives voted 92 – 49 to pass the universal healthcare bill, H.202. The House bill passed as a result of thousands of Vermonters speaking out and demanding that healthcare be treated as a human right and provided as a public good.
“This bill puts Vermont on a path to a system in which every Vermonter can get the healthcare they need when they need it, and the financing of that system is shared equitably by all. This is a huge step forward,” says Peg Franzen, President of the Vermont Workers’ Center.
The Healthcare Is a Human Right Campaign still hopes to strengthen the bill in the Senate based on its human rights principles of universality, equity, accountability, transparency and participation.
“This bill is a road map and it gets Vermont started down that road. We are fighting hard to have human rights principles be the guidelines for this bill, because we must have a system that works for everyone,” says Franzen. “We’re asking the Senate to specify that Green Mountain Care will be financed equitably, which means that people
Continue reading Vermont House Passes Universal Healthcare Bill
By James Haslam, on January 7th, 2011
 More than three hundred Vermonters converged at the Statehouse on January 5th to deliver more than four thousand petition signatures to lawmakers Shap Smith, John Campbell, Claire Ayer and Mark Larson. The petition demands that Vermont lead the nation in the adoption of universal healthcare. The petition also builds on last year’s passage of Act 128 the “Universal Access To Healthcare Act,” which mandates that Vermont create a healthcare system which meets the human rights principles of universality, equity, accountability, transparency, participation and healthcare as a public good. The rally also comes in anticipation of the release of the state mandated universal healthcare system options, designed by Dr. William Hsiao, expected on January 19th of this year.
The Cedar Creek room of the Statehouse was packed with Healthcare Is a Human Right supporters from all across the state in red shirts carrying signs, along with many legislators on the first day back in the Statehouse. Mari Cordes of the Vermont Federation of Nurses & Health Professionals Union at Fletcher Allen, spoke about her personal
Continue reading Vermonters Rally for Health Care for All
By James Haslam, on May 5th, 2010
 MONTPELIER – Vermonters from all across the state converged on the statehouse on May 1st in a demonstration to show that Vermont can and should be the first state in the nation to recognize healthcare as a human right and provide it as a public good by implementing a single-payer, universal healthcare system.
Over a thousand people marched from the Montpelier City Hall down to the capital building accompanied by drums, dancers, puppets, baloons and signs supporting universal healthcare whiloe chanting “hey, hey what do we say? Vermont is ready to lead the way!” The marchers then joined another two hundred participants already at the Statehouse lawn and swarmed up the capitol steps for a festive rally. They were joined by US Sen Bernie Sanders and the rally also featured skits by various regional organizing committees of the “Healthcare Is A Human Right” campaign, musical performances by Vermont artists, and speeches by campaign leaders from all parts of the state.
Sanders, a longtime advocate of universal care, called it a “moral disgrace” that the U.S. is the only
Continue reading 1000 Rally For Single Payer Healthcare in Vermont
By James Haslam, on January 26th, 2010
 A team of VT Nurses, EMTs, and paramedics from Fletcher Allen Health Care in Burlington, VT, members of the Vermont Federation of Nurses and Health Professionals (AFT), are organizing donations and groups of volunteers to go to Haiti in the coming days, weeks and months to help with the relief efforts. Below is a report from Mari Cordes, RN from the amazing first group of Fletcher Allen nurses and providers who are in now in Haiti. The Vermont Workers’ Center /JwJ is proud that Mari is also a major leader in the Healthcare is a Human Right Campaign.
After much effort organizing transport, gathering more supplies and continuing to develop very important infrastructure and network for this and future teams, working with the Cruz Roja in the Dominican Republic, communicating with Partners in Health in Haiti and our own reconaissance team that struck out ahead of us yesterday, we have joined the rest of our group in a large medical compound in Jimani. Jimani is a border town with Haiti on
Continue reading A Nurse’s Report From Haiti Earthquake
By James Haslam, on January 22nd, 2010
Cross-posted from Vermont Workers’ Center/JwJ.
 A large crowd of over 350 people attended the joint hearings held by Vermont Senate Health & Welfare Committee and House Committee on Healthcare at the Statehouse last Tuesday. Dozens of Vermonters testified urging lawmakers to pass the single-payer healthcare bill, S.88 and H.100 (see summary of the bills here). Senator Bernie Sanders joined hundreds of members of the Healthcare Is A Human Right Campaign, which is coordinated by the Vermont Workers’ Center.
“We come to you tonight to demand a healthcare system that is based on principles that recognize that healthcare is a human right,” spoke Margaret Dunne from Rutland, reading testimony on behalf of her wife Bela Schrug.
The testimonies of almost 100 Vermonters spoke to the legislature of how deeply and widely the current system of healthcare is impacting the state. Reed Webster, a state worker from Bellows Falls, spoke of chronic back problems that won’t allow him to retire at 55 because he would be unable to afford private insurance.
“How many other Vermonters are
Continue reading Hundreds Of Vermonters Urged Lawmakers To Act On Healthcare
By James Haslam, on January 8th, 2010
More than two hundred Vermonters from the Vermont Worker’s Center “Healthcare Is A Human Right Campaign (HCHR)” filled the Cedar Creek room at the Statehouse on January 6th, coming from all over the state, to deliver thousands of postcards to the leadership of the State Legislature and to take action on the two single-payer health care bills, S.88 and H.100, and mend the broken healthcare system this year.
“We came here today because we seek to change what is politically possible in the health care reform process,” said Susan Lucas, RN president of the nurses union at Copley Hospital. “We believe that health care is not a commodity but a public good shared by all. The time is now to make health care a basic fundamental right for every single person”
The event received a lot of attention from the Vermont media. Check it out!
“Rally for Health Care Reform in Vermont”, WCAX
“Health Care Rally Held at Vermont Statehouse”, WPTZ
“Workers Lobby for Single Payer Health Care”, Vermont Public Radio
“Flurry of Activity in First Day of Session”, Vermont Press Bureau
And we’re just getting started! There
Continue reading Health Care is a Human Right in 2010
By James Haslam, on December 2nd, 2009
Last night the Vermont Workers’ Center’s “Healthcare is a Human Right” Campaign held their second Chittenden County People’s Forum on Healthcare at St. Michael’s College.
 State Senator Doug Racine, chair of Vermont’s Senate health and welfare committee, announced that his committee will begin holding hearings on S.88, the bill that (along with its House companion H.100) will put Vermont on the road to recognizing healthcare as a human right.
“Healthcare is the most basic of human rights,” said Racine. He has scheduled the first public hearing on the bill, to be held jointly with the House health care committee, for January 12, exactly one week after the start of the 2010 legislative session.
Racine’s choice of Tuesday’s forum for the announcement was seen by many as recognition of the success of the Vermont Workers’ Center’s statewide grassroots campaign at putting pressure on the Vermont legislature to enact healthcare reform legislation that embodies human rights principles.
“We now have organizing committees statewide and we have been working with a number of other organizations to build a grassroots network capable of changing what is politically possible for healthcare reform in Vermont. It is clear that
Continue reading Single-Payer Health Care Will Be Taken Up in Vermont 2010 Legislature
By James Haslam, on September 8th, 2009
This Op-Ed Appeared in the September 6, 2009 edition of the Bennington Banner.
For the last several weeks, media coverage of the healthcare reform debate has been dominated by images of angry disruptions of congressional town hall meetings by those opposed to reform. In Vermont, by contrast, the three town hall meetings held in August by Sen. Bernie Sanders were civil, and by all accounts, the majority of those in the audience supported reform based on the principle that healthcare is a human right.
Hundreds of people came out to these events to declare their support for the basic right to healthcare and with such a huge amount of support for fundamental change, the people opposing so-called “socialized medicine” were clearly a very small fragment of the community at these events.
For over a year, the Vermont Workers Center and a growing grassroots movement of hundreds of working and low-income Vermonters have been building the Healthcare Is a Human Right Campaign. What does it mean to say that healthcare is a “human right?” It means recognition of the equal and inalienable right of all members of the human family to the best possible physical and mental health,
Continue reading The Struggle of Our Time
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