Issue Position: Quality, Affordable Healthcare

Issue Position

It's time to move in the direction of rational, evidence based healthcare reform that ensures every Vermonter had access to quality care at an affordable cost.

We must shift our focus to lowering the real costs of healthcare, not just how it's paid for. We need to provide greater choice in coverage so that Vermonters aren't boxed in and have the freedom to decide what's best for each of us, individually. We need to control costs, through accountability, competence, modernization and reengineering. We must make Vermont a place where medical professionals want to practice and we must recognize that any concentrated effort to effect meaningful change and correct significant problems created in the last six years will take time.

But first, we need to provide Vermonters with a health care exchange that works. Vermont's chronically dysfunctional exchange has hurt and continued to hurt thousands of Vermonters, who have had valid claims denied, who have incurred needless costs and who have spent hours on hold. Vermont has bled over $200 million -- the highest amount per capita in America -- on Vermont Health Connect, a health care exchange that barely works. It should be discontinued and Vermonters should be freed from being required to purchase insurance only from the exchange. We should have the same freedom afforded to citizens of every other state in the nation.

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