Senator Bernie Sanders wants you to go to the doctor. Sanders appeared at the Community Health Center in Burlington to promote a free clinic that organizers hope will see 100 patients on Sunday. Sanders says primary care centers like the one in Burlington are an essential part of national health care reform. Sanders helped secure a commitment in the Senate's version of the health bill for $10 billion dollars to expand federally qualified health centers.

On Monday Senator Leahy met with leadership of Fletcher Allen Health Care, the University of Vermont and the Vermont National Guard to view a demonstration of new equipment at the hospital’s Simulator Training Program.  At the event Leahy announced more than $1.7 million in funding he has secured in the federal budget for the project, which provides training to hospital nurses and doctors, university medical students and guard personnel on state of the art simulation equipment.  The equipment offers realistic training experiences for medical conditions that range from birth to gunshot wounds and other severe trauma. 

Sen. Douglas Racine unveiled his long-awaited health care reform bill Tuesday, a proposal that would pave a path toward a state-financed system that covers all Vermonters regardless of income. Racine, the chairman of the Senate Health and Welfare Committee and a Democratic candidate for governor, said his bill would design three new health care models for the state and have them ready for Vermont's next governor to implement.

Next to an ad for kitchen cabinets on Page 13 of a recent issue of the Brattleboro Reformer, an advertisement touted the award-winning emergency room of the Southwestern Vermont Medical Center in Bennington. After year upon year of struggling to rein in the ballooning cost of health care, House Health Care Committee Chairman Steve Maier, D-Middlebury, is unsure whether hospitals should be spending their money — or ratepayers’ money — that way. He has proposed legislation that would prohibit them from using money for advertising and marketing. “It’s not producing health care,” Maier said of the money spent on advertising.

With Democrats against the ropes on national health care reform, Vermont’s political prizefighter has come out swinging. Howard Dean is traveling the country trying to fire up Democrats weary from months of setbacks at the hands of Republicans — who, despite their small numbers in Congress, have skillfully blocked much of the Democratic agenda. At an appearance in Brattleboro on February 17, the former Vermont governor and Democratic National Committee chairman told a gathering that Democrats must get “tougher” if they want to win political battles. “We have a Republican minority who acts like a majority, and we act like a minority sometimes,” Dean told the crowd. “We need to stand up for what we believe in and we need to do it every single day.”

After an hour of watching the televised, bipartisan health-reform summit Thursday, everyone in the room agreed: Health-insurance policy cannot remain a spectator sport. The course of action: Stay informed and weigh in with legislators. The nonprofit Vermont Interfaith Action hosted a gathering at its Burlington office, and its members kept their comments down to a dull roar as Congressmen intoned for and against the Senate's reform bill. The Vermont Interfaith Action (a group that includes several Christian denominations and Jews) maintains a nonpartisan approach to social justice, said Debbie Ingram, the group's executive director. But, she added, Vermonters whose commitments to reform are couched in faith need to get off the couch.

Using money from a grant, Southwestern Vermont Medical Center will offer free mammograms to women without insurance coverage or with high deductibles. Eileen Druckenmiller, communications specialist for SVMC, said that the exams are paid for through a grant from the Susan G. Komen for the Cure foundation. She said that there is enough in the grant to give 100 women mammograms, as well as to provide 300 women with information about the exams and breast cancer.

Consultants who analyzed administrative expenses for the public/private management of the state’s Catamount Health insurance product over the past two years concluded it might have cost $1 million less per year had the state run it. The Douglas administration disputes this conclusion. The Legislature created Catamount Health in 2006 to give Vermonters without health insurance a more affordable option. In negotiations to win support from Gov. Jim Douglas, the Legislature agreed that private insurance companies would provide the coverage, while the state would determine eligibility for the coverage and subsidize the monthly cost to reduce the expense to customers.

The federal government will give Vermont a little more financial help with health care costs -- a $12.6 million break on the amount the state has to repay Medicare for covering prescription drug coverage expenses for residents eligible for both Medicare and Medicaid coverage. Kathleen Sebelius, U.S. health and human services secretary, announced Thursday that all states would get temporary relief from meeting the full repayment requirements thanks to funds from American

 A new national study says Chittenden County is Vermont's healthiest while Essex County is the state's least healthy. The national study by the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation found that the least healthy counties tend to be poor and rural while the healthiest tend to be urban or suburban and upper-income. The study ranked the overall health of the counties in all 50 states.

Vermont was awarded nearly $12 million Friday to help doctors and hospitals transition from paper to electronic medical records. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services awarded the Vermont Department of Human Services about $5 million. Meanwhile, $6.8 million is going to Vermont Information Technology Leaders Inc. The Montpelier-based not-for-profit group is one of 32 organizations across the country that are developing regional centers to coordinate health information technology.

There's a new idea in the Statehouse for raising millions of dollars - and maybe even cutting down on obesity. Some legislators want to tax what they describe as "non-nutritional" food. The money would help pay for health care programs. Barre Rep. Paul Poirier is one of the lead supporters of the plan that he describes as "an assessment on low nutritional foods." Several years ago this proposal was called a junk food tax but Poirier says this new approach is different. He wants to target all foods that are low in nutritional value because he thinks these foods play a large role in driving up Vermont's health care costs:

Former Vermont governor and 2004 Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean will return to Brattleboro for his first public appearance in nearly five years to address health care reform and other hot-button political issues. Dean, who currently serves as the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, will appear at the Ramada Inn on Putney Road in Brattleboro beginning at 6:30 p.m. on Feb. 17.

Update on Thursday, February 18, 2010 at 10:20AM by VCF Staff

In his first Brattleboro appearance since announcing his candidacy for president seven years ago, former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean joined Windham County Democrats Wednesday evening to honor Timothy J. O'Connor Jr. and speak briefly on top political issues nationwide.

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Vermont, already a leader in the effort to cut health-care costs by reining in drug companies' marketing, could become the first state to require the firms to report how much they spend providing free samples of their wares to physicians. But the effort, summed up in a report to lawmakers by Attorney General William Sorrell, is drawing opposition from the drug industry, which says it would create an unnecessary layer of bureaucracy, and from some health care providers, who say it could hurt their ability to deliver care to the poor.

People thought James Haslam was crazy for thinking that Vermont lawmakers would debate a major health care reform bill this year. But after hundreds turned out last week for an impassioned Statehouse hearing on health care, the hopes of the executive director of Burlington's Vermont Workers Center don't look quite so farfetched anymore. "We are operating under the belief that it has to happen," said Haslam. "We know we have to have something substantial by the end of the legislative session."