Letter: People's Health & Wellness Clinic changes lives

Why Not Have Equal Access to Health Care?

To the Editor:

I thank The Bridge for Cassandra Hemenway’s article about the People’s Health and Wellness Clinic, “The Game Changer: Health Care Even if You Can’t Afford It” (Dec. 21, 2022). As a healthcare activist and a friend of Dan Barlow, the clinic’s executive director, who has worked with him on healthcare issues, I know there is none better to lead this vitally important feature of our healthcare landscape. The clinic is one of the few that cares for those forgotten by our mysterious reliance on and reverence for the aptly misnamed “free market.” 

Back in the late 1990s or so, I worked on an article for The Bridge on the People’s Health and Wellness Clinic. I cannot remember the article’s title or the date. I am sure it is buried somewhere in The Bridge archives. I had been one of those who couldn’t afford healthcare. The clinic nursed me through several illnesses. I wanted to thank them for it and writing about the clinic was my way to do it. 

In 2007, after liver disease (from natural causes) nearly took my life, I lost employment that had finally provided me with health insurance because I was a medical loss for the company. The clinic got me onto VHAP, which allowed me to monitor the recovering liver. This eventually became the Medicaid that determined a white spot on a bone was not bone cancer. 

The clinic does wonderful work. I was glad to see another article on it. At bottom, however, is the looming question of why do we need it in the first place? Exactly what is wrong with all of us having equal access to healthcare under a single system? 

Walter Carpenter, Montpelier

Link: https://montpelierbridge.org/2023/01/letters-to-the-editor-jan-11-2023/