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The Institute encourages the downloading and circulating of its Special Reports. Please credit the Institute as the source. 

Special Reports

• "Don't Send Me to Waterbury!" Replacing the Vermont State Hospital with Humane Community-Based Recovery - and Saving Millions of Dollars for Vermont Taxpayers (November, 2007). 

This report chronicles the often dark history of the 110-year old Vermont State Hospital for the Insane, explains the arguments for permanently closing the now-decertified institution, offers examples of successful "recovery in community" alternatives for persons with mental illness, and makes strong arguments against creating a very costly (~$100 million) new institution to replace the present Hospital, as desired by the current state bureaucracy and the state employees' labor union. 
Full report, 20pp, here
Executive Summary  here
(Requires Adobe Acrobat Reader)
 
 
• Off the Rails: Changing Demographics, Changing Economics, Accumulating Obligations: How Will Vermont Cope with a Challenging Future? (December, 2006)

This important report (pdf format, 16pp) is a condensed and more popularized version of the Arthur Woolf/Dick Heaps paper listed below. It shows with text and graphics the expected changes in the state's productive work force 2006-2030, and the projected growth of state expenditures for K-12 education and human services over the same period. It presents five possible strategies for avoiding the dismal outcome that today's public policies will lead to if continued 24 years into the future. The report includes the names of the 23-member Project Advisory Group.
(Full Text of Report, 16pp, PDF format)
(Requires Adobe Acrobat Reader)
 
 
• Demographic Changes and Fiscal Consequences in Vermont (December, 2006)

This academic study, produced under contract by Dr. Arthur Woolf and Richard Heaps of Northern Economic Consulting Inc., is the basis for the Institute's December 2006 report "Off the Rails: Changing Demographics, Changing Economics, Accumulating Obligations. How will Vermont cope with a challenging future?" This document contains a 20 page appendix describing the economic methodology underlying the analysis. 
(Full Text of Report, 36pp, PDF format)
(Requires Adobe Acrobat Reader)

• The Promise of Consumer-Driven Health Care: How Putting Consumers in Charge of their Health Will Improve Wellness - and Reduce Excessive Costs (April, 2006)

This 20 page report (pdf format) explains consumer-driven health care and the various tax-free savings options (HSAs, HRAs, FSAs). The report describes the results of twelve CDHC plans dating back to 1978 and the history of CDHC initiatives in Vermont. The report includes a page of useful references and web sites. 
(Full Text of Report, 20pp, PDF format)
(Requires Adobe Acrobat Reader)

• Understanding Vermont's Health Policy Choices (January, 2006)

This report contains eight of the most relevant EAI commentaries on health care, plus the concluding section of the 2004 New Prescription" report and three other short documents. The purpose is to illuminate the choices in health acre policy facing the 2006 legislature. 
(Full Text of Report, 20pp, PDF format)
(Requires Adobe Acrobat Reader)
 
 
• Reforming the Medical Malpractice System

This is the invited testimony (3 pp) given by EAI President John McClaughry to the BISHCA Working Group on medical malpractice reform on January 26, 2005. It offers 12 heuristic ideas for changing the legal rules governing malpractice issues. Two of them (provider tort formulary and patient negligence formulary) are particularly innovative. (January, 2005)
(Full Text of Report, 3pp, PDF format)
(Requires Adobe Acrobat Reader)
 
 
• Retaining Supreme Court Justices: The Constitution, the Law, and the Legislature's Duty to Check an Overreaching Supreme Court. 

This February 2005 Institute report explains the judicial retention process, and argues forcefully that Justices John Dooley and Denise Johnson ought not be retained because of their repeated excursions into judicial "never never land" to extract socially progressive results from Vermont's 1786 constitution. The report also contains a summary of 16 weird opinions of the Supreme Court since 1992, views of the Founders on judicial usurpation, and useful references. 
(Full Text of Report, 24 pp, PDF format)
(Requires Adobe Acrobat Reader)
 
 
• Health Care in Vermont: A New Prescription (July, 2004)

A pathbreaking agenda for consumer driven health insurance , transforming health care systems, reforming provider liability, and expanding personal responsibility for wellness.It contains seventeen specific steps for implementing the new agenda. (20pp, pdf format)
Full Text of Report in .PDF format
(Requires Adobe Acrobat Reader)
 
 
• Creating Choices: Reforming Vermont's Home Health Care Regulation to Put Customer Service Ahead of Provider Protection (2004)

Vermont alone of the fifty states preserves a system which confers near-monopoly status on twelve regional nonprofit agencies providing home health care to Medicaid and Medicare consumers. This near-monopoly system guarantees that the favored providers will become less responsive to consumer needs, because the consumers have nowhere else to turn. This report recommends ending the monopolies and allowing competition to better serve the home care needs of tens of thousands of elderly, disabled, and other needy Vermonters. (32pp, PDF)
Full Text of Report in .PDF format
(Requires Adobe Acrobat Reader)
 
 
• Helping Albert (2003): What $114 million in tax dollars buys for 1,850 developmentally disabled and socially isolated Vermonters (24pp, pdf)

Full Text of Report in .PDF format
(Requires Adobe Acrobat Reader)
Data for enrollment and spending from Helping Albert (Excel spread sheet)
 
 
• A Health Care Reform Agenda for Vermont (January, 2003)

This 14 page report clearly and concisely describes the "patient power" paradigm for health care policy; summarizes ten important steps the Federal government should take to help the states implement it; and sets forth 17 steps state governments can and should take. The report is suitable for any state, not just Vermont. 
Full Text of Report in .PDF format
(Requires Adobe Acrobat Reader)
 
 
• Renewing Economic Opportunity

This report, published in June 2002, is a response to the Dean Administration's "Successful Communities" report on improving the economy of the Northeast Kingdom
Full Text of Report in .PDF format
(Requires Adobe Acrobat Reader)
 
 
• Vermont’s Health Care Policy (January, 2002)

An analysis and response to the report of the Governor’s Bipartisan Commission on health care Availability and Affordability. 
Full Text of Report in .PDF format
(Requires Adobe Acrobat Reader)
 
 
• Vermont's Health Care Policy 2002

This seven page document contains the Institute's analysis and specific recommendations for health care reform. It is part of the preceding report (in PDF format), but this version can be downloaded directly without using PDF.
 
 
• School Children First! 

This major Institute report describes the workings of Vermont's educational quality and finance law, Act 60; catalogs its growing problems; and outlines a replacement emphasizing parental choice and provider competition. (July 2001)
 
• Citizen Action: Ten Things You Can Do To Advance the Principles You Believe In

This concise ten-point program informs every citizen on how to make a true civic contribution, and keep our democracy and civil society strong. (10/00) Feel free to copy and circulate! 
 
• Reviving Health Insurance in Vermont

This is the executive summary of the Institute's report on how unwise laws and regulations destroyed Vermont's insurance market, and what steps should be taken to reverse the damage. (04/00)
Full Text of Report in .PDF format
(Requires Adobe Acrobat Reader)
 
 
• The Vermont Supreme Court at Work, 1993-2002 

A choice selection of sixteen remarkable opinions from the Court, including such favorites as those explaining education finance and gay marriage. (February 2005) 
 
 
• Vermont's Labor Movement 1999

This Institute report, issued in January 1999, offers a snapshot of Vermont Labor's aims, organizing tactics, legislative goals, and political agenda.

Policy Proposals

• Economic and Tax Policy for 2008

 
• Health Care Reform for Vermont, 2005 

 
• Education Reform for Vermont, 2007 

 
• Judicial Accountability, 2005 

 
• The Citizen Initiative: Giving the People a Voice

This brief report proposes a unique citizen initiative for Vermont, whereby citizens could petition a question onto a general election ballot, and the simultaneously elected legislators would have to vote on it during the first month of the ensuing session. (07/00) 
 
• The Educational Freedom District 

A proposal to allow communities to "opt out" of the state education megasystem.
 
• Vermont Medisave (Medical Savings Accounts) 

How a state medical savings account system would work.

Fact Sheets

• The "Marriage" Amendment: Getting It Straight

This brief legislative report explains the language and intent of the proposed Constitutional Amendment on marriage rights considered by the Vermont Senate on April 19, 2000. 
 
• Educational Choice in Vermont 

Vermont's 129 year old consumer choice system.

Institute Books

• The Vermont Papers: Recreating Democracy on a Human Scale, by Frank Bryan and John McClaughry (Chelsea Green Press, 1989). In this widely reviewed book Institute President McClaughry and Advisory Council member Bryan show how Vermont is uniquely capable of devolving governmental power from the overgrown state level to 40 new democratically governed shires, with their own finances, cultural identities, and flags.

Available from the Institute (pb) for $12 postpaid.

• A Better Path: From Welfare to Work, by John McClaughry (EAI, 1993). This 90 page paperback book reviews the history of welfare policies, and describes how Oregon's successful Jobs Plus Program successfully replaces dependence with a fresh start in the work force.

Available from the institute for $4 postpaid.