“The Moral Determinants of Healthcare”

I recently wrote about my and others’ concerns about the current state and direction of Vermont’s healthcare systems. But we must also ask, what have our political leaders done to… Read More

Vermont’s Healthcare Implosion

The oldest exposed reef fossils in the world lie in Isle LaMotte, Vermont, where they came to rest 480 million years ago after one of the most violent tectonic plate… Read More

Childhood Trauma Leads to Lifelong Chronic Illness — So Why Isn’t the Medical Community Helping Patients?

When physicians help patients come to the profound revelation that childhood adversity plays a role in the chronic illnesses they face now, they help them to heal physically and emotionally… Read More

Governor Scott, It’s time for a vaccine and indoor masking mandate.

During the Pandemic, Governor Scott has been an exemplary crisis leader. Now is the time for him to escalate his leadership and require vaccinations and public masking of all Vermonters… Read More

Vermont Healthcare: A Mare’s Nest

As I’ve written in the past, we’ll never sort out the hot mess that health care’s become in Vermont and in the U.S. until we agree on the fundamental question… Read More

Healthcare: A Lucrative Business or a Definable Right?

In healthcare, as in hunger and housing, we face a moral choice. Is Mammon or caritas – profit or wellbeing – the best driver of community health initiatives? In his… Read More

Do We Fully Understand and Account for Addiction in Vermont?

Last year, well over 100 Vermonters died of street and pharmaceutical drug overdoses. Like traffic deaths, we keep track and publicize annually our drug deaths both as an indicator of… Read More

Why is Pharma Obsessed with my Cucumber?

A recent audit report by State Auditor Doug Hoffer lays bare the staggering cost of healthcare to Vermonters – $9,000 per year, almost $2,000 more than the national average. For… Read More

Healthcare and the Role of Vermont Hospitals

As a grateful user of Vermont’s healthcare system (UVM hip replacement last year), an observer of its growth (the house I grew up in in Morrisville was next to a… Read More

The True Cost of Adverse Childhood Experiences

Do you know what an A.C.E. is? It’s not your local hardware store, the winning card in your hand, nor your friend who plays professional tennis. It’s an increasing used… Read More

Don’t medicate grief

Recently, the leader of a major eastern university observed that twenty-five per cent of his incoming class this year is on some form of prescribed psychotropic medication for ADHD, depression,… Read More

Mental Health is Not a Black Hole

NASA defines a black hole as… “a place in space where gravity pulls so much that even light cannot get out. The gravity is so strong because matter has been… Read More