As the Vermont Senate is about to pass H.202, the state’s universal health care bill, Healthcare Is a Human Right supporters are urging Senators not to accept any floor amendments that could weaken the bill.

The Campaign has sent a letter to Senators asking them "to oppose any floor amendments that seek to reduce the number of employers in the exchange, delay the entry of employers to the exchange, allow sale of individual and small group insurance outside the exchange, or exempt certain individuals from paying for or receiving Green Mountain Care benefits. These amendments will undermine your efforts to control costs and increase coverage. They all seek to maintain the status quo, rather than working to enable the exchange to work as a transition to the universal, publicly administered and publicly funded healthcare system that is the reason for this reform."

Click here to read the full letter or download it below.

In an op-ed in VT Digger, the Campaign’s policy chair explains why these amendments have emerged and how they seek to derail universal health care reform in Vermont:

"Over the last several weeks, big business and fake employer groups came out to kill H.202, Vermont’s universal healthcare bill, with their deadly embrace. Hypocritically asserting their support of health care reform, they have been successfully pressuring senators into weakening the bill, thus possibly inflicting death by a thousand cuts.

These opponents turned against ordinary Vermonters who desperately need universal, publicly financed health care, not just another marketplace where insurance companies restrict our access to care while relentlessly driving up costs."

Read the complete op-ed here.