League of
Women Voters of the Upper Valley
Hanover,
NH, Norwich, VT and neighboring towns
updated April 23, 2006 Home Page
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Vermont Advocacy Positions
LWV VT
Impact on
Issues
A recent
expansion of LWV VT positions is listed first. A summary of all
postitions follows.
HEALTH
CARE POSITION STATEMENT, January 2006
The League of
Women Voters of Vermont believes that, until such time as a basic level
of quality health care is available to all United States residents at
an affordable level of cost, a state program can and should provide
such health care to the residents of Vermont.
The League of Women Voters of Vermont supports:
A publicly-funded, single-payer, comprehensive, universal, equitable
health care system. Funding should be separated from employment
status, supported by broad-based taxes on earned and unearned income.
Increased access to primary health care facilities through
community-based health centers, including existing space in schools and
senior centers, mobile treatment units, and telemedicine.
Addressing the shortage in professional personnel by forgiveness of
tuition loans for new doctors, dentists and nurses practicing in
underserved areas in Vermont, and greater use of nurse practitioners
and physician’s assistants.
Covering all medically necessary services, using evidence-based best
practices. This should include preventive, chronic, psychiatric,
dental, home care and licensed al-ternative care.
The establishment of mechanisms to adequately control total system
expenditures for health services while maintaining standards of quality
care.
The League believes that the rate of increase in medical spending can
be con-trolled through savings in administrative costs inherent in a
single payer system; efficiencies provided through information
technology, emphasis on preventive care, price negotiation for
pharmaceuticals, and global budgeting for hospitals.
Making the necessary up-front investment in order to take advantage of
the benefits of a coordinated, statewide information technology system.
All the proposed solutions for Vermont’s health care crisis include
coordinated health care information technology. The state’s
Health
Resource Allocation Plan lists the following priorities: electronic
health/patient records; chronic disease registry; bar-coded medication
administration systems; computerized physician order entry; clinical
decision support; telemedicine; picture archiving and com-munications
systems. Technology also has a role to play in billing and
purchasing
and personnel records, etc. The Veterans Administration has found
their IT sys-tem has reduced medical error rates and duplication of
care.
Education and incentives for healthy lifestyles.
Healthy lifestyles can and should be encouraged through, for example,
school-based programs including universal physical education; good
nutrition in school lunch programs; workplace incentives for exercise;
use of advertising as has been done to cut down on the use of tobacco.
Oversight by a citizen board or commission.
Oversight of the state health care system should be independent of the
govern-ment. Membership on such a board should include
representatives
of all stakeholders: providers, consumers (balanced demographically and
geographi-cally), the legislature and the executive branch.
The Vermont League
of Women Voters supports:
Making
democracy work
Initiatives
that encourage voter turnout and voter registration.
The State
League is monitoring legislation that would affect voter registration
and we are actively lobbying for the Instant Runoff Voting (IRV)
initiative.
Education
Implementation
of Act 60 that provides equality of educational opportunity; equity in
property tax burden; recognition of ability to pay; and state
responsibility for the quality of education.
The state
League's Education Committee is currently working on "Education for
Citizenship." The idea is to produce a civics education for all
high school junior students. We are pursuing the possibility of
working with other organizations to bring this about.
Children
at risk
Child abuse
and violence prevention; quality health care including nutrition and
prenatal care; early childhood education; and quality child care for
all Vermont communities.
Environmental
quality
Initiatives
that support local planning to strengthen town centers and reduce
sprawl, and programs that promote clean air and water, recycling, and
energy conservation in Vermont.
Health care
Health care
programs that assure coverage and long-term care to all Vermonters;
effective cost control, and improved quality of medical care.
The above statement is taken from the LWV of Vermont web site: http://www.lwvofvt.org/lwvvt_postitions.htm
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