Vermont Workers' Center Fighting for Workers' Rights!

"Vermont's Own"

Friday March 5, 2010
http://www.benningtonbanner.com/opinion/ci_14522731

Vermont supporters of meaningful health care reform have been floating a well-tested format that deserves more than a cursory review this year. Regardless of what happens -- or doesn't happen -- in Washington, they say,
the state would fare better with its own single-payer health care option.

* * * FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE * * * February 26, 2010

BURLINGTON – Four Fletcher Allen nurses recently back from Haiti disaster relief efforts will be honored by the Healthcare Is A Human Right campaign on their float at Magic Hat's 15 Annual Mardi Gras Parade in Burlington, Saturday Feb 27th. The "Healthcare Is A Human Right Campaign" is a grassroots organizing campaign aimed to change what is deemed 'politically possible' in an effort to make Vermont the first state in the country to establish the moral commitment that healthcare will be treated as a public good for every resident.

MONTPELIER, VT - Working Vermont, a coalition of Vermont labor unions, has joined the Healthcare Is A Human Right Campaign in an effort to make Vermont the first state in the country to establish the moral commitment that healthcare will be treated as a public good for every resident.

MONTPELIER – Over a hundred Vermont union nurses and other healthcare professionals held a press conference calling on Vermont to lead the way in establishing healthcare as a basic public good for all Vermonters at the Statehouse today. The event is part of a growing grassroots campaign called the Healthcare Is A Human Right Campaign, which is coordinated by the Vermont Workers’ Center. There was a live call from Haiti reporting on Vermonters disaster relief efforts as part of the press conference in addition to talking about healthcare in Vermont.

HAITI - Nurses and Technical Professionals at FAHC who are members of the Vermont Federation of Nurses and Health Professionals, the union of 2000 members at FAHC, are organizing donations and groups of volunteers to go to Haiti in the coming days, weeks and months to help with the relief efforts.

**NOTE: INCLUDING VT NURSES CALLING IN TO REPORT FROM HAITI**

WHAT: Press Conference: Live Report from Nurses Haiti Relief Effort and Vermont nurses and health professionals stand up on for Healthcare Is A Human Right.

WHEN: 12noon, Friday, January 29th

WHERE: Cedar Creek Room, Statehouse, Montpelier

Press Conference: Vermont nurses and health professionals stand up on for Healthcare Is A Human Right.
12noon, Friday, January 29th, Statehouse Montpelier

A call for health reform
Statehouse crowd details system's faults, horrors, urges change.
by Dan Barlow
http://www.timesargus.com/article/20100113/NEWS/100119988

MONTPELIER – Hundreds of Vermonters filled the Statehouse Tuesday for a public forum on health care reform, with a vast majority urging lawmakers to adopt a single-payer system.

MONTPELIER, VT- A large crowd of over 350 people attended the joint hearings held by Vermont Senate Health & Welfare Committee and House Committee on Healthcare at the Statehouse Tuesday. Dozens of Vermonters testified urging lawmakers to pass the single-payer healthcare bill, S.88 and H.100 (see summary here: http://www.workerscenter.org/node/168). Senator Bernie Sanders joined hundreds of members of the Healthcare Is A Human Right Campaign, which is coordinated by the Vermont Workers' Center.

VERGENNES, VT- Forty-five people packed the Bixby Memorial Library on January 10 to take part in the Addison County People's Forum on Healthcare with Senator Diane Ayer and Representatives Michael Fisher, Diane Lanpher and Steven Maier. This forum was the tenth of its kind scheduled in recent weeks by the Healthcare Is A Human Right Campaign (HCHR), a statewide grassroots organizing effort coordinated by the Vermont Workers’ Center (VWC) which aims to change what is politically possible in health reform in Vermont.

The event including testimony from local residents who have been negatively affected by the healthcare crisis and explored the how Vermont can establish healthcare as a basic human right and win single-payer healthcare in 2010.