The Green Mountain Care Board, the entity that oversees and regulates Vermont’s health care system, commissioned a consultant’s report, “Green Mountain Care Board: VT Hospital Quality Review and Capacity Planning in Preparation for Value-Based Care October 27, 2021” to point the way for long-overdue systemic reform. Hospitals do not take kindly to being told what to do. They have become institutions that have been resistant to big change because of the power they wield in local communities. But pressure is mounting for real change. That is what this report points out.

We hear talk about the high cost of health care and about how something needs to be done. The only way this country is ever going to control health care costs is for there to be bold change and bold change in not something hospitals are good at. The consultant’s report calls for bold change.

Influenza (flu) is a contagious viral infection that can cause mild to severe symptoms and life-threatening complications, including death, even in healthy children and adults.

There was an epidemic of H1N1 Influenza that began in 1918 and petered out in about 1950. At the time, the spread of “The Flu” was blamed by many on the electrification of homes. Another H1N1 pandemic began from 1970 and is still with us today. A more severe flu variant, H3N2, has been running parallel. Electrification has nothing to do with any of it.