Health Care Forum Results, Snelling Center Report

Health Care has become a pressing issue for all Americans, including Vermonters. Federal budget cuts have slashed funding for Medicaid, leaving states to pick up the tab. Meanwhile prescription drug prices and health insurance premiums have skyrocketed. The end result is that larger and larger percentages of ordinary people, especially the middle class and working poor, have had to make the painful choice to give up access to health care in order to cover the basic necessities of life for their families.

Here in Vermont, the House Committee on Health Care and the Senate Health and Welfare Committee decided that the best way to move forward in solving our health care needs is to work with the public to find out where the greatest concerns lie and help determine the best ways to address them. As a result, the committees kicked off a series of open public health care forums, seeking feedback from Vermonters all around the state. The Snelling Center for Government at the University of Vermont has issued a report on the feedback received at these health care forums.

Here are the most common concerns expressed by the Vermonters who attended these forums:

• People spoke with a sense of urgency. The system is broken. It is not serving us. We may not agree on how to fix it but there needs to be a set of clear steps that will address some of the most important issues.
  
  
• People are impatient. Why are we still talking about this, and not moving ahead? We want and the system needs us to have everyone covered and participating, why isn't it happening - this is not a new conversation, lets move on and deal with the other issues that we need to address.
  
  
• Be bold, be cautious. There was a desire to step out in front of this problem in a big way. It is beyond small fixes. Set up a framework to move ahead, but in those areas where there will be major changes in how people access the system or what they get from it, test the change before getting in too deep without an exit strategy.
  
  
• Don't damage the existing quality of care.
  
  
• Keep the community based hospitals open. We want that level of care close to home.
  
  
• All Vermonters should be able to expect access to the same level and quality of care no matter where they live. If there is to be a basic health care plan, it should still be comprehensive and acknowledge that health is a multi-faceted field that needs to treat the whole individual. Specifically, mental health, complementary care, eye care, dental care were all regularly mentioned as parts of health care that need to somehow be encompassed in "basic."
  
• Prevention should be better (fully) integrated into how we deliver health care. Prevention is necessary for the system to work to provide the best quality, and in the long term will mean lower costs.
  
• Simplicity is a key concept when people speak about how they want to access the system and pay for it. More direct access. Less paperwork. More integration. More communication within the system.
  
• Specifically need to address the high cost of prescription drugs.

The report is chock-full of information based on the forum results, far more than will fit in a single blog post. For the full report, click here.