Will profit-making be Job One at OneCare?

Posted by Sarah Lyons on October 5, 2012 at 8:45 am | * Comments (5)

By WENDELL POTTER

When I read that Fletcher Allen Health Care and Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center were forming a new for-profit entity to administer Vermonters’ Medicare benefits, one thing leapt off the screen: the term “for-profit.” As someone who worked for two of the country’s largest for-profit health insurers over nearly 20 years, I know how the quest for profit can supercede the best interests of patients. Read more

Census: Still down, but maybe looking up

Posted by Jack Hoffman on September 21, 2012 at 12:33 pm | Comments Off on Census: Still down, but maybe looking up

The Vermont Census data released yesterday bring to mind a book title from the 1960s: “Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me.” According to the Census, Vermont saw improvement in 2011 in a couple of key indicators, including median household income and poverty. Read more

Health care reform: New ad, old tricks

Posted by Sarah Lyons on September 4, 2012 at 9:56 am | Comments Off on Health care reform: New ad, old tricks

By WENDELL POTTER

After watching Vermonters for Health Care Freedom’s new commercial, I was reminded of what my former colleagues in the health insurance industry and I used to do to influence public opinion, often using deceptive tactics. I was also reminded of why I left my job as an industry executive and began speaking out about how the use of those tactics helped perpetuate a system that fails more and more Americans, including Vermonters, every year. Read more

Reduced layoffs—that would be worth celebrating

Posted by Jack Hoffman on August 31, 2012 at 12:09 pm | Comments Off on Reduced layoffs—that would be worth celebrating

The Labor Day holiday is intended to celebrate working people. But this Labor Day there are still many Vermont workers who are out of work. Between February 2008 and October 2009, Vermont’s private sector employers eliminated more than 14,000 jobs in response to the recession. Read more

Putting away money for a rainy day

Posted by Jack Hoffman on August 21, 2012 at 4:45 pm | Comments Off on Putting away money for a rainy day

The Legislature has passed five budgets since the start of the Great Recession in fiscal 2008, and it didn’t use the pot of money set aside for just such a crisis: the state’s rainy day funds. The $50 million-$60 million in reserves in just the General Fund could have helped the state through difficult times, maintaining services when Vermonters needed them most. Read more

New survey: Americans want fairer wealth distribution

Posted by Jack Hoffman on August 9, 2012 at 9:20 am | * Comments (1)

Income disparity between those at the top and those at the bottom has been growing in Vermont for over two decades. As we showed in our report earlier this year on the plight of Vermont’s middle class, the share of income that went to the top 1 percent of Vermonters rose from 6 percent in 1981 to 19 percent in 2005. Read more

The budget’s in the black—but did it do its job?

Posted by Jack Hoffman on July 27, 2012 at 11:34 am | * Comments (1)

The Shumlin administration just released the latest revenue figures, and it looks like Vermont finished fiscal 2012 at the end of June with about a $12 million General Fund surplus, which is earmarked for flood repairs at the Waterbury complex. Still, revenues were more than the regular spending approved by the Legislature. Read more

The Monthly Jobs Brief is 3!

Posted by Paul Cillo on July 20, 2012 at 6:32 pm | Comments Off on The Monthly Jobs Brief is 3!

Three years ago this month Public Assets Institute published its first monthly Jobs Brief—our one-page update on Vermont’s employment picture, published the same day as the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics releases its monthly data.

In 2009, Public Assets got interested in what was behind these numbers. Read more

Michael Moore delivers a shot in the arm for Public Assets

Posted by Paul Cillo on July 1, 2012 at 10:00 pm | Comments Off on Michael Moore delivers a shot in the arm for Public Assets

When Michael Moore set out to make SiCKO, his acclaimed 2007 documentary about the health care industry, he thought he’d focus on some of America’s 50 million uninsured. He put out a call for stories—and received 25,000 emails.  He and his staff read them all. Read more

Happy Birthday Act 60

Posted by Jack Hoffman on June 27, 2012 at 1:46 pm | Comments Off on Happy Birthday Act 60

Act 60 celebrates its 15th birthday this month, which makes it Vermont’s most durable education financing system in the last 50 years. Prior to Act 60, there was the Foundation Plan for state aid to education, the Morse-Giuliani formula, the Miller formula, and the Hunt-Simpson formula. Read more