Issues
PAI’s current work focuses on three areas: health care, education, and family economic security. We provide Vermonters with facts and analyses to inform the policy discussions, as well as policy models and proposals in these crucial areas of government and public life.
Few things are more important than being healthy. And staying healthy involves preventive care and regular visits to the doctor. It may involve an operation at the hospital or long-term care at home or in a nursing home. We all need and deserve access to quality, affordable health care services throughout our lives. No one should have to face bankruptcy in order to stay alive and healthy.
But America’s health care system is in crisis, in part because it is not a system at all, but a scattering of uncoordinated, competing pieces, some inadequate, others redundant, and many working at odds with the needs and interests of the people they are meant to serve.
It must be a priority of government to provide the public infrastructure that helps citizens stay healthy. Government must ensure that an adequately staffed health care system provides affordable, high-quality care to everyone. This responsibility includes public funding, planning, regulation, professional licensing, and service programs.
Thomas Jefferson famously noted: “Whenever the people are well informed, they can be trusted with their own government.”
Education is necessary for people to live satisfying and productive lives as well as to participate meaningfully as citizens in our democracy.
In this spirit, our public school system is open to everyone, regardless of wealth, ability, or religion. Vermont is fortunate to have a public school financing system that is fair to both taxpayers and students, and that provides an adequate, sustainable source of funding through the Vermont Education Fund.
Making sure that the Education Fund continues to receive adequate revenue to support a good education for our children is an important watchdog responsibility of Vermonters. There have been efforts every year since the Education Fund was established in 1997 to divert revenue from the fund or to saddle the fund with new responsibilities without new revenues. These efforts increase property taxes and undermine public education.
Adequate funding for higher education should also be a priority in Vermont to ensure that students have access to institutions of higher learning both in state and outside.
All Vermonters want and need sufficient income to give their families a decent home, provide nutritious food, and pay for health care, transportation, childcare, and other essentials. Yet, many working Vermonters continue to earn less than what they need to live. When working Vermonters earn less than they need to live, taxpayers end up filling the gap.
While Vermont’s per capita income has been increasing since 2000, not all Vermonters have enjoyed the benefits of these increases. In fact, the income disparity between those at the top and everyone else has been increasing for the past twenty years.
The ability of all citizens to live decently is fundamental to the cohesion of any society. When Vermonters can’t pay for basic needs even working two or three jobs, they feel hopeless, alienated, and disenfranchised — and that hurts everyone.
Government can and should ensure that workers are paid fair wages and are treated with respect, that affordable childcare is available for working parents, and that taxpayer money spent to put Vermonters to work is spent wisely.