Vermont Workers' Center Fighting for Workers' Rights!

Caledonia County People's Forum on Healthcare
Vermont Workers' Center to hold sixth regional forum with Vermont state legislators

When: 7pm, Tuesday, November 3,
Where: Danville School, 148 Peacham Road, Danville, Vermont.

Background: After successful forums in Montpelier, Bennington, Brattleboro, Burlington and Rutland, the growing "Healthcare Is A Human Right Campaign" comes to the Caledonia County. The Vermont Workers' Center is working with a new crop of Caledonia County residents who are grassroots leaders to plan and carry out this event. Every Caledonia County state legislator has been invited to participate. In total, forty legislators attended the previous five forums, which had about 500 total participants. The forums include personal testimonies of people suffering under the current system, presentations on the human right to healthcare, and public discussions on what Vermont can do if federal healthcare reform fails.

The "Healthcare Is A Human Right" Campaign's long-term goal is a universal system in which health care is recognized as a public good and provided collectively, rather than as a commodity sold in a marketplace, and where the human right to health of all residents of the state is fully recognized, regardless of race, gender or gender identity, ability, sexual orientation, nationality or immigration status. Financing must be based on principles of universality, equity, and social solidarity, such as a single-payer system. Through these community forums the Vermont Workers' Center hopes to voice everyday Vermonter's values and visions for a universal system while at the same time urging our legislators to take the lead and make Vermont the first state to provide health care as a public good. The only legislation that has been introduced into the Vermont State Legislature for the 2009-2010 session that meets these standards are H.100 and S.88.

"We have found that there exists is a tremendous amount of suffering, fear and anxiety in our communities that is completely unnecessary, and unjust. Most of the thousands of people we have talked to are ready to fundamentally change our healthcare system and believe that Vermont can lead the country by making healthcare a basic right to all. "We are already spending the money to do this, the money is there, but too much of it is not going into providing healthcare and too many people have barriers to receiving the care they need," said James Haslam, Director of the Vermont Workers' Center who initiated this campaign in the spring of 2008 and coordinated the largest weekday rally at the state capitol this past May for Healthcare Is A Human Right, drawing over twelve hundred Vermonters from across the state.

After the conclusion of the first five People's Forums, on October 8, 2009 two of Vermont's largest newspapers, the Rutland Herald and Times Argus endorsed the Healthcare Is A Human Right Campaign, in a powerful editorial entitled "Inherent Compassion". Read it here: http://www.rutlandherald.com/article/20091008/OPINION01/910080316/1038/O...

The forum is free and open to the public.

Resources:
www.workerscenter.org/healthcare
VT House Bill: http://www.leg.state.vt.us/docs/2010/bills/Intro/H-100.pdf
VT Senate Bill: http://www.leg.state.vt.us/docs/2010/bills/Intro/S-088.pdf

Contact: James Haslam, james [at] workerscenter.org