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Vermont Passes Single-Payer Health Care, World Doesn’t End

As Gov. Peter Shumlin took his spot on the granite steps of the Vermont State House, a row of people fanned out behind him wearing bright red t-shirts proclaiming, “Health care is a human right.” The slogan sounded noble, and wildly unrealistic. Until the governor spoke.

“We gather here today to launch the first single-payer health care system in America,” began Shumlin, a Democrat who has been governor barely four months. “To do in Vermont what has taken too long: have a health care system, the best in the world, that treats health care as a right, and not a privilege."

[…] The push for single payer system in Vermont was built slowly and methodically over the last decade, but has moved with remarkable speed since Shumlin took office in January. […] Single payer advocates have been a constant and visible presence around the state. The independent Vermont Workers’ Center launched its “health care is a human right” campaign in 2008—inspired, said health care organizer James Haslam, by the desperate calls the Center was receiving on its workers’ hotline. “It was becoming more of a health care hotline,” he said. The group’s members went door to door, conducted numerous forums for legislators and organized health care rallies that drew thousands.

Read the full article in Mother Jones or download it below.