www.workerscenter.org<\/a>. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At the National Governor\u2019s Association meeting last month President Obama issued a challenge. Responding to attacks on last year’s health care reform legislation he said, \u201cIf your state can create a plan that covers as many people as affordably and comprehensively as the Affordable Care Act does \u2014 without increasing the deficit \u2014 you can […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20145","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daily-program"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20145","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20145"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20145\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Vermont\"](\"http:\/\/workerscenter.org\/sites\/default\/files\/VTHRHCRallyPhoto1.JPG\")
At the National Governor\u2019s Association meeting last month President Obama issued a challenge. Responding to attacks on last year’s health care reform legislation he said, \u201cIf your state can create a plan that covers as many people as affordably and comprehensively as the Affordable Care Act does \u2014 without increasing the deficit \u2014 you can implement that plan.\u201d The President also pledged support for bi-partisan legislation that allows states to opt-out of the ACA in 2014, three years earlier than the original year of 2017. Of the two states rising to meet the opt-out challenge\u2014Oregon and Vermont\u2014it is Vermont that is on a fast track to implementing a viable alternative in the form of a single-payer health care system. Last week, the Vermont House passed its version of the single-payer legislation in a 92-49 vote. It is currently being debated in the state Senate. Vermont\u2019s Democratic Governor Peter Shumlin campaigned on the issue of a single-payer system and is expected to back the current bill. The Valley Advocate reports that if approved an independent public body would design a benefit package and set the parameters for the single payer system. It will be the first system of its kind in the United States, and is estimated to save Vermont $580 million annually, $1.9 billion by 2019, and create 4,000 jobs in the process.<\/p>\n