Lessons from the Healthcare Fight

This article presents the responses of 6 organizers from around the country to the question: “what can left organizers learn from the fight over healthcare?”

Economists Throw Weight Behind Universal Health Care in Vermont

This article in Common Dreams reprints the open letter from economists to Vermont legislature calling for universal, publicly financed healthcare. The article concludes that “Thursday’s letter indicates that the grassroots movement has not lost momentum.”

Can’t Afford Not to Act

In this op-ed, a Vermont nurse speaks out about how the current healthcare system fails to meet her patients’ needs.

29 Arrested After Statehouse Protest

The Burlington Free Press covers the Vermont State House sit-in. The article highlights legislators’ perspectives on the protests as well as Vermont Workers’ Center President James Haslam’s comments.

Sitting In for Healthcare

This op-ed was written by one of the 29 members of the Healthcare Is a Human Right Campaign who staged a sit-in in the Vermont State House and were arrested as a result. The author tells how he was personally affected by a healthcare system that doesn’t meet human rights standards, and calls on legislature […]

Moving Forward with Healthcare

In this op-ed Vermont Workers’ Center President James Haslam responds to Gov. Shumlin’s decision to abandon his commitment to single-payer universal healthcare.

Why Universal Health Care Is Essential for a More Equitable Society

This article explains why the current healthcare system is exacerbating inequality in our society and how public healthcare financing can help change this. It uses the equitable healthcare financing plan introduced by Vermont’s Healthcare Is a Human Right Campaign to illustrate why healthcare is a matter of equality.

The Fight for Health Care Justice Moves to States

LaborNotes reports on the groundswell of state-by-state organizing for universal, publicly financed healthcare, citing the leadership of the Vermont Workers’ Center in building a winning model.

“Small Place Close to Home”: Toward a Health and Human Rights Strategy for the US

In the journal Health and Human Rights, Elizabeth Tobin Tyler explores health and human rights strategies in the US. While she mainly focuses on legal approaches, she also stresses the importance of grassroots organizing to drive policy change by highlighting the Vermont Workers’ Center’s campaign for universal publicly funded health care.

Op-Ed: New Solution for Universal Healthcare

This article examines how the Supreme Court challenge to the Affordable Care Act (ACA) creates an opportunity to reevaluate healthcare reform — and explains how Vermont’s human rights model for healthcare reform meets people’s fundamental needs in a way that the ACA’s market-based model cannot.

Lessons from the Single-Payer State

The Vermont Workers’ Center puts forward five key lessons from its campaign to pass a universal healthcare law, which can be applied to movement building efforts more generally.

From Market Competition to Solidarity?

The human right to healthcare offers an analytical and advocacy framework for shifting the healthcare reform debate from individualist, market-based approaches to the collective responsibility for health care as a public good.

Bernie Sanders: Healthcare is a Right Not a Privilege

In this article, Senator Bernie Sanders affirms healthcare as a right and states that “at the end of the day, as difficult as it may be, the fight for a national health care program will prevail. Like the civil rights movement, the struggle for women’s rights and other grass-roots efforts, justice in this country is […]

From Private Profits to Public Goods?

This article discusses the health policy proposals of the 2008 presidential election campaign and primaries, thereby offering a historical perspective on the reform positions that have shaped health policy under the Obama administration

Human Rights US Social Forum People’s Movement Assembly

This article lays out the human rights principles stated and agreed upon by collaborating organizations of the People’s Movement Assembly on the Right to Health at the US Social Forum in Detroit to guide the struggle for health and healthcare in the United States.

A Rights-Based Approach to Healthcare Reform

This book article outlines the history of the human right to health in the U.S., derives principles and standards from international human rights law, and offers a human rights framework for guiding health reform efforts.

It’s Not Enough to Be Angry

This article shares lessons learned for effective organizing and focuses on the importance of uniting across issues to create a powerful movement capable of confronting the fundamental problem of economic injustice.

Vermont Must Lead the Way on Healthcare

This op-ed by James Haslam, Director of the Vermont Workers’ Center, explains why the federal healthcare reform model, which offers public options alongside private insurance coverage, is a half-measure that will not protect the people’s human rights. The article urges fundamental change that establishes healthcare as a public good, not a market commodity.