Single Payer in Vermont Takes Two Years to Build

The chambers of the legislature are a sea of red. Hundreds of Vermonters, many of them wearing the red T-shirts of the Healthcare Is a Human Right campaign, have driven in to attend a January hearing on universal, single-payer health care.

With a strategy, a vision, a movement-building approach, and a ton of grassroots organizing, the Healthcare Is a Human Right campaign has changed what was considered “politically possible” in Vermont.

We did it by mobilizing thousands of Vermonters over a two-year span around a vision of health care for people, not profit. That slow, careful building has manifested in a bill now facing the legislature that would authorize a commission to design three single-payer health care systems. The legislature could then choose from those options to build a new health care system in 2011, when a new governor will be seated, replacing a retiring (and unsupportive) Republican.

The options will present a variety of payment and financing ideas, but within a framework that declares health care is a public good guaranteed by the state.

NOT JUST LEGISLATIVE

The Vermont Workers’ Center, a chapter of Jobs with Justice, was clear from the start that Healthcare Is a Human Right was not just a legislative campaign. Kicked off in April 2008, for a year it avoided anything related to the legislature. Instead it focused on elevating the voices of those most affected by the health care system.

One of the tools used by corporate power to manage dissent is convincing people that social change comes through elections and lobbying of legislators—the “low-intensity” democracy taught in high school. As activists began to talk to people about fixing the health care system, many of them assumed that we simply needed to talk to lawmakers.

But campaigners knew they needed a movement strong enough to compel the legislature to adopt a bill that met human-rights standards, including universal access to comprehensive care (which is enshrined in the bill now facing lawmakers).

They built organizing committees in communities around the state and developed a one-day popular education workshop, engaging in lots of conversations about how social change really happens. Few people—especially in rural Vermont—had been exposed to this way of thinking about politics.

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The patient work paid off. Last May Day, about 1,200 people descended on the state Capitol in the largest weekday rally in Vermont in recent memory. In the fall, seasoned local organizing committees held 10 “people’s forums” around the state—but these were opportunities for people to explain their experiences with the system and their demands for change, not platforms for legislators.

At the opening of the January legislative session, activists delivered more than 4,000 postcards demanding action in 2010 on the single-payer bills, and within the first week joint hearings were held.

Now the Healthcare Is a Human Right campaign has launched an ambitious 16-week plan to increase pressure, taking the campaign from local town-hall meetings, a viral YouTube clip, and relentless contact with legislators to a culmination in another huge May 1 rally.

The Working Vermont union coalition has backed the campaign, and rank and filers—especially AFT-affiliated nurses—have been key leaders, anchoring many of the local organizing committees.

“If someone needs health services they should be available, just as the fire department and K-12 public education are,” says Amy Lester, a school guidance counselor from Plainfield and a leader of her NEA chapter. “It should not matter who you are, where you work, or how much money you have.”

Jonathan Kissam belongs to UE Local 203 and the Vermont Workers’ Center.