MONTPELIER, Vt. – Vermonters for Health Care Freedom, a non-profit organization committed to fostering free market reforms in American health care, welcomed Meghan M. Hansen as its new executive director May 1.
“The board of directors unanimously selected Meg Hansen to lead the next chapter of our organization,” Paul Giuliani, the group’s president, said. ‘An accomplished writer with a medical education and expertise in community-oriented advocacy, she is uniquely positioned to assume this role.”
Hansen has experience in the environmental sustainability sector (for-profit and non-profit) in Oslo, Norway and London. In Vermont, she has worked closely with the House Minority leader and caucus in communications, prior to which she was selected by the RNC as the state’s inaugural Republican Leadership Initiative fellow for grassroots development. She authored a regionally syndicated column, originating in the Eagle Times, examining local and national sociopolitical issues. In addition, her essays in cultural criticism and poetry have been featured in various publications.
“I am honored and humbled by the Board’s conviction in my ability to serve VHCF. I look forward to learning from and collaborating with the organization’s valued members and impressive network of partners,” Hansen noted.
Hansen is a graduate of Dartmouth College (M.A., Liberal Studies) and trained in medicine at Kasturba Medical College, India (M.B.B.S.). She also has a postgraduate diploma in fashion studies from the Polimoda Institute (Florence, Italy). A southern Vermonter, she was born in India and has lived in the Middle East and Europe.
VHCF aims to educate Vermonters about the risks and failures of socialized medicine, and prevent the implementation of its various iterations such as single-payer health care, universal and publicly funded primary care, All-Payer Waiver model, and the Accountable Care Organization (ACO) OneCare Vermont. Our current objectives include:
1. Protecting Vermonters from a new statewide mandate levying financial penalty on taxpayers without healthcare coverage, which would reinstate the Obamacare “individual mandate” requirement eliminated by Congress;
2. Repealing certificate-of-need (CON) programs that prohibit the expansion and creation of new healthcare facilities;
3. Averting the taxation of prescription opioids for it will serve as a punitive healthcare tax on patients that legitimately use these drugs, including the terminally ill and those suffering from chronic pain;
4. Advocating for direct primary care (DPC): an alternative payment model (enacted in twenty-five states so far) that brings choice and competition back to the market place by improving patient access to primary care providers at a flat, affordable membership rate;
5. Terminating Green Mountain Care Board: an unprecedented bureaucracy that exercises sweeping and medically unethical regulatory powers over Vermont’s health care.
“Meg brings a wealth of diverse and innovative perspectives to VHCF and the Green Mountains. We are confident that she will advance VHCF’s strategic objectives and guide the organization’s contributions to health policy and healthcare delivery,” Giuliani added.
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