Renewable Revolution

By Bill Schubart 👍

Jun 3 2021

SNIPPET:

As one hospital administrator put it, and I paraphrase: We’re dependent on a steady stream of broken people for our survival. We repair and bill transactionally. The sum of those transactions keeps our doors open. If we were simply given our annual budget against an accountable and measurable commitment to invest in prevention, education, and maintaining population health, we would save money and see fewer sick Vermonters.

If we are ever to achieve “population health,” it must involve committing to an integral understanding of physiological and mental health from a care perspective. We closed most of our “mental hospitals,” such as they were, and built more prisons. Now we have the tragedies surrounding teens and adults being housed in emergency rooms for lack of any resources in mental health, which is shameful. The Howard Center and Brattleboro Retreat are at capacity and underfunded.

Until we integrate physical and mental health, we’ll succeed at neither. Do we also not understand that poverty, homelessness, hunger, abuse, and lack of access to health care are all precursors to mental and physical illness? Is the prison endgame at $50,000 per prisoner per year really cheaper than population health?

We have the resources and the money to get this right. ... ... What we’re lacking is the leadership to deploy these resources to forge and execute a vision for preventive managed care.

Full article:
https://vtdigger.org/2021/06/03/bill-schubart-gov-phil-scott-needs-to-take-the-lead-on-health-care-reform/