Recession wreaks welfare havoc

Author: Amanda Cormier

As the worldwide financial crisis deepens, Vermont social welfare programs have witnessed an influx of low-income residents seeking help to make ends meet. Across the state, health care and home heating have risen to the forefront of concern.

The Vermont Coalition of Clinics for the Uninsured (VCCU), an organization of nine free health clinics across the state and funded by the Vermont Department of Health, experienced a 20 percent increase in patients from July to September 2008, according to Executive Director Lynn Raymond-Empey.

Raymond-Empey said that she does not expect this trend to stop any time soon.

"I think we're going to see a new segment of the population contacting the clinics and me over the next several months because people are going to have to make some choices," she said. "Do I purchase heating oil for my house, food for my family, or do I pay my insurance premium which I may or may not be using over the coming months?"

Free clinics offer referral services and health care to the uninsured in Vermont, which is comprised of about 60,000 people, according to the Vermont Campaign for Healthcare Security Education Fund. Raymond-Empey said that the high number of small businesses in Vermont contributes to this statistic.

In Middlebury, the Open Door Clinic operates on Exchange Street. As the only free clinic associated with the VCCU in Addison County, a staff of volunteer healthcare providers, nurses and community members provide services ranging from treatment of injury to mental health counseling.

According to the Addison County Independent, visits to the Middlebury clinic have risen in the past few months, fueling support to re-open a clinic in Vergennes that closed last year. A new Open Door Clinic, funded by the Community Health Services of Addison County, opened in Vergennes Oct. 23. The clinic will be open every other Thursday from 6 to 9 p.m.

Raymond-Empey said that although she hopes that there will someday be no need for free clinics because the entire state is insured, she understands the state's unique economic situation.

"We recognize that there are a lot of small employers in Vermont that can't afford to provide health insurance to folks," she said. "What we do see is a state that's really, really trying hard to fill that gap and make sure our population is covered with health care insurance."

The state of Vermont has three adult health care programs: Medicaid, the Vermont Health Access Program and Catamount. Free clinics try to make up for what employers and the state cannot cover, but Raymond-Empey said that providing adequate funding to the clinics is problematic - especially at a time when the demand for the services free clinics offer is increasing.

According to Raymond-Empey, the grant the clinics receive from the Department of Health has remained the same through the past few years. The VCCU also received and relied upon a generous donation from an independent organization each year.

But this year, the organization decided instead to donate to a fund to help low-income Vermonters heat their homes.

This fund - the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) - was designed to help residents at or below 125 percent of the federal poverty level pay winter heating bills. On Oct. 22, state legislators announced an expansion of the program to help fund full fuel benefits for an additional 1,050 residents.

Although health care remains a concern for low-income residents, the economy's effects on heating oil may be easier to fathom. University of Vermont professor Elaine McCrate said that the expansion of LIHEAP and the plummeting price of oil offer a glimmer of hope to low-income Vermonters. But McCrate, a labor economist who has worked with Vermont legislature on livable wages, said that the low price of oil may be only temporary.

"Heating oil is likely to be much cheaper this winter than we expected," she said. "It doesn't mean it's going to be cheaper than last year. And OPEC is meeting to restrict output and raise the price again. But if something similar [to the decreasing price of gasoline] happens with home heating oil, it's the only bright spot I can see at the moment, and I don't know how long that's going to last."

McCrate said that the housing meltdown is also likely to have a considerable impact on low-income Vermonters looking for rental housing, with increasing foreclosures leading to a more crowded and expensive rental market.

In the end, she said, the contrast between Vermont's wages and cost of housing will intensify under the financial meltdown, affecting all residents.

"The problem for Vermonters is that while we have a relatively high cost of housing, which is not going down here the same way that it is in a lot of cities, we also have relatively low wages," she said. "Between those two, Vermonters get squeezed pretty hard."