Vermont Senate Passes Bill for Universal, Publicly Financed Health Care

A small state is fighting for the human right to health care -- and winning.

On April 26, Vermont's Senate passed, by a majority of 21 to 9, a universal health care bill that would ultimately provide publicly financed health care to all residents. Since the House already approved a version of this bill, which originated in Governor Shumlin's office back in February, it is almost certain that Vermont will become the first state in the country to start the process of creating a publicly financed, single-payer health care system.

Single-payer health care became politically feasible in Vermont around the same time it was sidelined and blocked in the federal health reform effort. Many attribute this to the creative and unwavering Healthcare Is a Human Right campaign, a diverse grassroots movement built by the Vermont Workers' Center. By engaging many thousands of ordinary Vermonters in claiming their right to health care, the campaign raised the voices of the people against corporate interests profiting from the market-based health insurance system.

Yet the struggle is far from over. The legislative negotiations have shown just how much people-power it will take to prevail over the ongoing bullying from big business and insurance industry lobbyists set on cutting deals. Led by Vermont's eerily powerful largest corporate employer, IBM, and incentivized by the deep-pocketed insurance industry, lobbyists mounted a series of attacks to stall and derail universal health care reform. Human rights supporters' protests at the Vermont Statehouse managed to fend off many industry demands, yet the bill did get watered down in the process.

Last month, the Vermont Senate passed legislation, approved earlier by the House, that would establish a single payer health care system in the state. The legislation would make Vermont the first state in the nation to, as Gov. Peter Shumlin (D) said, make health care “a right and not a privilege.”

The governor’s office just confirmed for ThinkProgress that Shumlin signed the legislation into law this morning, making the state the first in American history to pass legislation that will establish a single payer health care system to provide care to all citizens. Now that the law is signed, Vermont will spend the next four years setting up the system and preparing it for implementation.

In order to actually enact the system, the state needs a waiver from the Affordable Care Act health reform law. Currently, the federal government will start handing out state waivers in 2017 — three years after Vermont wants to implement its system. Rep. Peter Welch (D-VT) has introduced an amendment that would move the waiver date up to 2014, an idea that President Obama has endorsed.

Update: In a statement provided to ThinkProgress, Shumlin explained that he had an economic and moral imperative to champion Vermont's new health care law: "This law recognizes an economic and fiscal imperative – that we must control the growth in health care costs that are putting families at economic risk and making it harder for small employers to do business. We have a moral imperative to fix this problem, with 47,000 Vermonters uninsured and another 150,000 underinsured and worried about how to afford keeping their families healthy"