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Vital Signs: Vermont Charts A New Course For Health Care
This week Vermont Edition explores the big concepts and the bedeviling details involved in overhauling the health care system in our series, Vital Signs. Vermont’s health care experiment is unlike any other approach, but there are lessons to be learned from what other states have tried.
We compare the ambitious efforts to reform state health care systems, particularly in New England among Massachusetts, Maine and Vermont. We examine approaches are they taking in terms of universal access, extending insurance and cost containment. And we learn how Vermont fits into the context of other states’ experiments with overhauling health care — how our problems are similar, whether single-payer is a common goal, and what we can learn from their experiences. Our guests are Nancy Turnbull, associate dean of the Harvard School of Public Health, and Andrew Hyman, a senior program officer with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
Also in the program, voices of Vermonters on health care. We’ve spent the past few weeks gathering ideas from doctors, legislators, listeners and health care administrators about what they see as the biggest problem in our health care system, and we explore the ideas they brought forward.