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And EVERYBODY is paying the price.
by Rob Roper
During the healthcare segment of the pre-session legislative briefing on the state of Vermont’s economy, Senator Alison Clarkson (D-Windsor) piped up, “At the risk of asking the dumbest question of the day, and having been around when our healthcare costs were $2 billion a year and not $10 [billion], why in the hell do we have the highest healthcare costs in the country?” It wasn’t a dumb question. It was quite a good question. What’s dumb is not knowing the answer – and it’s YOU! You and your party and three decades of passing progressive policies aimed at making healthcare “free.”
PJ O’Rourke, in his brilliant 1991 book, Parliament of Whores, quipped, “If you think healthcare is expensive now, wait till you see what it costs when it’s free.” Well, here we are!
A telling slide provided by Blue Cross Blue Shield comparing prices for medical services showed an MRI at UVM Medical Center cost $6,520. At Dartmouth, the same MRI costs $4,844. At an independent facility it costs just $1,799. A colonoscopy? $5,609 at UVMMC, $3,626 at Dartmouth, and $1,865 at an independent. Lab work? $117, $98, and a mere $18 respectively. Delivering a baby? $17,373, $12,471, and only $2,870 – nearly $15,000 less at an independent provider.
The problem in Vermont is that the Left has made a concerted effort to create virtual monopolies in healthcare services via UVMMC and health insurance via Blue Cross Blue Shield, driving private, independent healthcare providers out of business and into UVMMC, chasing alternative health insurance companies out of state, and regulating the favored, chosen survivors to the point where they are de facto government programs. When their dreams of single payer healthcare died in 2014, the backdoor approach to achieving the same goal has been to create “single providers” under the delusion that competition is inefficient and profits drive up costs to consumers. So, again, here we are!
As Representative Anne Donahue (I-Northfield) pointed out in the discussion following Clarkson’s not-dumb question, “If you want to go back twenty-five years or so, a little more, we were one of the lowest cost in the nation…. Now we’re at the highest.” What happened over that quarter-decade-plus? Guaranteed issue and community rating mandates for insurance (1993), Catamount Health, a compromise on the first single payer attempt (2006), Green Mountain Care aka Single Payer (2011), OneCare Health (2016), and countless other regulations. All government interventions into the marketplace to “make healthcare more affordable” and increase quality and access. As with pretty much every government intervention into the marketplace with these ostensible goals – seriously, folks, is this not obvious by now – IT DID NOT WORK, and, in fact, had the opposite effect.
Monopolies are not efficient or cost effective, and government sanctioned monopolies are even worse as it turns the industry and the politicians into partners in crime, cutting consumers largely out of the equation. This was the goal, and now we are paying the price – figuratively and literally.
Amy Spear of the Vermont Chamber of Commerce spelled out just how dire the situation has become. Healthcare costs “are directly affecting wages, hiring, workforce retention, and ultimately the affordability of life for Vermont families. This is not just a business issue.”
Spear laid out a comparison of Vermont to New Hampshire that is striking. Vermont has only two health insurance carriers versus three in New Hampshire. Vermont offers thirteen exchange plans compared to 78 exchange and 163 off exchange plans. The family plan in Vermont exceeds $2700 per month while comparable New Hampshire plans are “significantly lower.” For small employers, a silver plan in Vermont for a five employee business costs over $8500 per month, while in New Hampshire options range from just over $5000 per month to just over $7000.
Spear concluded, “Employers are telling us… annual double digit [insurance] increases crowd out wage growth and training. High premiums paired with high deductibles leave employees under insured and financially strained, and some small businesses are dropping coverage entirely, making it harder to attract and retain talent. These pressures feed directly into Vermont’s competitiveness challenge that we face.”
On the general economic front, Spear described a particularly bleak picture. According to the Chamber’s recent business climate survey, “Nearly three quarters of Vermont businesses rated Vermont’s business climate as 3 or below. More than three quarters of respondents described Vermont’s regulatory environment as not conducive for growth. And a majority said Vermont’s tax system negatively affects investment decisions, especially when combined with escalating healthcare costs. Workforce growth is stagnant… and only 19 percent expected growth this year. And many employers told us they are one more increase away from dropping coverage, raising prices, or cutting jobs.”
There are many factors affecting the cost of healthcare in Vermont that we can’t do much about: we have an aging population and older people need more healthcare, we have a small population creating challenges of scale, and we are a rural state. But the biggest problems we face are self-inflicted. Overregulation specifically aimed at eliminating competition by driving private, independent healthcare and insurance providers out of the marketplace. These things we can fix. But that would end the lucrative grift of being able to charge $6,520 for an MRI without having to compete with someone who could do the same thing for less than a third of the price.
Rob Roper is a freelance writer who has been involved with Vermont politics and policy for over 20 years. This article reprinted with permission from Behind the Lines: Rob Roper on Vermont Politics, robertroper.substack.com
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Categories: Commentary, Health Care
“At the risk of asking the dumbest question of the day, and having been around when our healthcare costs were $2 billion a year and not $10 [billion], why in the hell do we have the highest healthcare costs in the country?” Sorry Rob, but I have to disagree with your assesment as too the stupidity of her question. The answer to her question stares straight at her every morning when she looks into her mirror getting ready for a new day of bilking people out of their hard earned livings, and yet, I doubt that the folks under the “Golden Dome” will ever take responsability for any of it ! The only answer that they will have is moe money, moe money, moe money ! These idiots will never figure out that they just keep digging the hole deeper. They can not tax, and spend their (our) way out of this ! Given that, how about cutting and reassessing the necessity of programs ? Cradle to the grave is not working !
Be it in the Healthcare, Education or Government sectors of Vermont’s economy, the absence of free market competition incentives has bankrupted the State – and the Governor and legislature are expanding the dysfunction to bankrupt its taxpayers.
The Governor and our legislators are, in the words of Meryl Streep, who, while playing the role of the U.S. President in the 2021 American political satire with Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence, recommended how Americans respond to the impending calamity of Earth’s collision with a comet, said, just…. ‘Don’t Look Up!’
My specific worry is – that when the State is first forced to liquidate its assets to pay its creditors, assets that don’t completely cover the accrued debt, our personal private property will continue to be confiscated through property taxes to make up the difference. At the very least, the value of our personal property is being greatly diminished because the liability of owning property in Vermont is offsetting its otherwise fair market value.
Back in the mid 90’s for a brief moment I joined a political and ran for Windsor county Senator. I promoted HSA’s and high deductible insurance. The day I met Senator Dick McCormick he asked why I was running. I replied “I grew up in a healthcare family and have worked in healthcare for twenty years. I am very concerned in the direction Vermont healthcare is headed. The single payer government controlled socialist system that we are implementing will ruin healthcare. To that SenatorMcCormick replied “f-in people like you are dangerous and have no business running for office”. I was happy to do well in my town, be endorsed by the Eagle Times but I did not win the county nomination. Thirty years later I look back at the step by step damage caused by our county Senators. Each damaging step was pointed out to them along the way and still they do not know how it happened. The Democrats and Progressives have had their way for the last thirty plus years and they have destroyed our healthcare system, PERIOD. We need to throw these bums out.
Run again!
Rob, perhaps one of the best articles, well done, very well done.
The Golden Dome in Montpelier is run by lobbyists….and assorted crew, this is but one example. My father who was a pharmacist, during the Dean administration felt the over powering hand of Montpelier and their “cost savings”. Dean was working under the assumption that big pharma could do it cheaper, so Vermont made all the big pharms’s the only one who could fullfill prescriptions, my father sold the product for less than the big box stores. And when the law came into power and he could no longer fulfill prescriptions to his 30 years customers he hand because he wasn’t on the approved list, he had to sell his company…..to whom? Well big pharma.
The other twist was independents were lobbying to get the business, they were quashed at every attempt, then the leader of the independants got approved to fulfill prescriptions and the push to get others on board ended immediately.
On top of that, when the suppliers came to the new store now owned by big pharma, they provided the products cheaper to the new big box store. So, the company made more money, and the citizens of Vermont were denied private business and lower rates, along with better more personal service.
Then after a few years of starving out every independent, they changed the laws….after big pharma bought them all up.
From the comments above, it’s pretty clear these people know exactly what they are doing…..grifting and protecting their little fiefdoms with protected monopolies, protected by the state I might add…….
There is much of this going on within our state, perhaps 50% of the GDP is protected monopolies, otherwise known as fascism (ironic huh?) or marxism/communism. It’s what those countries collapse, they are full of grifters, grifting….stealing from productive citizens.
Great, great article.
This also applies to drugs and who has the contracts, many times people are forced to take expensive name brands…..because that’s who the insurer has a deal with. Anyone with any business sense can see this abuse and mismanagement in a second.
Why aren’t people in Montpelier….seeing this? They do, it’s the plan, the grift.
New headline today: “Fake People And Phony SSNs Had 100% Success In Getting Obamacare Subsidy, Fraud Investigation Finds”
The grift is a feature not a glitch.
Here is a video I’m watching, seems to ring true so far.
https://choiceclips.whatfinger.com/2025/12/04/reclaiming-your-joints-why-big-pharmas-arthritis-cures-are-a-scam-and-how-you-can-reverse-the-pain-in-weeks/
What about this for cancer treatment? It may well be worth investigating… of course a cancer cure that only costs $120, will certainly not be interesting to those who are providing a good income for all those who are pedaling something that costs $250k per person. You can provide good health for less money, but the grift is real. What makes the most money? Somebody how isn’t dead but is on major medical treatments, be it for mental issues (complete con) and much other medical treatments that are more about profit than good health.
https://choiceclips.whatfinger.com/2025/03/28/is-ivermectin-the-key-to-fighting-cancer-people-are-being-cured-all-over-the-world/
Changing the political atmosphere and putting a different face on it, I’m posting a link from SKRAPE https://www.dailyskrape.com/ You can sign in (free) to get emails, it’s political satire. I get two a day usually. Nice artwork and humorous and to the point on many subjects. Comments are interesting. Mostly the Fed gov is noted and people like CA Newman. It would be nice if the politicians in VT were also included. That would be great fodder. Enjoy
An interesting comment from SKRAPE, just published, to the point. The guy has experienced the same as VDC commenters.
Joe Modarots
The Cuckoo bird does not build its own nest ! It watches and waits, while other birds work hard to build their own. Then when it sights a completed one that it prefers it swoops in and attacks the builder, then claiming the nest as its own ! What an absolutely perfect medifore for today’s absolutely lazy, self centered, arrogant, narcissistic, spoiled rotten, Marxist, Islamist,” Progressive” spoiled rotten baby Democrat brats !
“ We believe in inclusion—especially of ideologies that consume their parents !”
Could anything be closer to the truth ? Mamdani, AOC, the rest of “The Squad,” etc.
Have any of them ever done any real work ? Have they worked at a company ? Have they run a company ? Founded a company ? Invented a product or a useful technology ? Have they developed any useful skills ? Can they do carpentry, plumbing or electrical work ?
Are they doctors, lawyers, dentists, nurses, hygienists, physical, respiratory or occupational therapists ? Have they trained as fire fighters, paramedics or police officers ? Are they artists or musicians ? Do they have any redeeming talent, skill or accomplishment to offer society that they have procured on their own ? Or have they, like the Cuckoo, just sat on their duffs waiting for someone else to do the work for them ? Do any of them have anything that they did not steal from their parents ? No, nothing ! Not a one ! Each one coming from a background of “ Privilege” that their parents worked their butts off so that their children could have !
Notice, I did not assign a color to it ! Privilege has no color ! It’s the same for all…
If you sit on your ass and do nothing with your life but live off of your parents success, you are “Privileged !” You are also, lazy, spoiled, and perfectly suited to lie about your background, join the Democrat party and run for office so that you can steal from others just as you stole from your parents !
Do not be fooled ! These “Progressive” Democrat fraudsters have nothing to offer you !
They can not offer character, because they have not developed any. They can not offer accomplishment, because they have none. They can not offer leadership, because they have never followed and learned it. They have nothing to give. Their only goal is to fool you into agreeing to let them live off of you the way they have spent their lives thus far living off of their parents !
If they are running for office, DON’T vote for them ! If they have already conned their way into office, vote them out the first chance you get !
This is America ! This is the country that has the most freedom, opportunity for success and personal fulfillment for anyone who wants to work to attain it ! Don’t let these imposters fool you ! Don’t let them fleece you. Don’t let them ruin our beautiful system of opportunity for you and your loved ones !
Add grifter Bernie Sanders to your list of losers who have done nothing constructive outside of politics.
Healthcare is a “for profit” corporate and government enterprise. It has nothing to do with a spririt of healing or curing what ails a person. It is bound to a spirit of greed and affliction. It is a “practice”. It is largely experimentation and does not address the whole person – only in parts and pieces – based on a matrix made up by those with power to corrupt. Now they hope to turn it into a business performed by robots and AI. Does that sound good, trustworthy, or effective? First, they must turn humans into a transhuman (not the gender type) a hybrid, a chemically, digitized mutated being.
If one were to peel off every tentacle and layer formed and gripped around healthcare, realize what would be left to administer principles of good health and wellbeing. Most likely a whole lot of money, more freedom to access, and better living without toxic chemical ingestion.
A simple exercise: think about generations before Rockefeller medicine, even going back thousands of years. There were whole body practices, natural remedies, and lifestyles that apparently worked or a great majority of us wouldn’t be here today. The goal was only a few control it and dominate it – such is why people get sick and some stay sick from cradle to grave. All based around the fear of death – the first symptom of affliction – instilled, conjured fear.
Good thing UVM Health is a non profit , otherwise , you would really have a cost crisis on your hands