At the end of May, Vermont Governor Peter Shumlin signed a bill that can put Vermont on the path to single-payer health care. As it stands, Vermont’s plan is to cover every resident of the state for actual health care they can use. But the Green Mountain State’s ambitious plan can only succeed if the Federal Government grants several critical waivers of existing health care laws.

In this era of tight public funds afflicting virtually every state in the nation, there is one revenue source that has been all but neglected in the public debate: the subsidy of “not for profit” private hospitals by exemption from sales and property taxes being the typical form. This has been reexamined by the remarkable Illinois supreme court decision in the Provena Covenant case: the Court ruled that the Provena hospital group failed to meet the charitable health care provision required to enjoy the property ands sales tax freedom they had enjoyed.

Physicans for National Health Program (PNHP) and Firedoglake.com are joining forces to urge the Obama administration to grant Vermont the waivers it needs to implement its new health care system.

You can sign the petition here.

We don’t know what the restrictions on access to Medicare will be, so I question why anyone is out there promoting a pig in a poke.