Redirecting the minimum 30% profit usually absorbed by the health insurance industry toward actual health care services instead enables Vermont to provide affordable health care for all of its citizens. Vermont will lead the way for other states to take health care into their own hands and bypass the restrictions imposed by the federal program.
Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin on Thursday signed into law a bill establishing a single-payer health care plan for the state, making Vermont the first state to do so.
Shumlin lauded the legislation as an “economic and fiscal imperative” — as well as a moral one.
“This law recognizes an economic and fiscal imperative – that we must control the growth in health care costs that are putting families at economic risk and making it harder for small employers to do business,” he said in a Thursday statement. “We have a moral imperative to fix this problem, with 47,000 Vermonters uninsured and another 150,000 underinsured and worried about how to afford keeping their families healthy.”
At least 150 people gathered on the steps of the Montpelier statehouse to view and celebrate the signing of the bill.
