Dear Editor, To understand why universal primary care is so important, you have to experience what it is like to have a life-threatening disease without access to a primary care doctor. Twenty years ago, that was me. I nearly lost my life because of it. The breathtaking question is why our polit ical system — federal and state  — has been so cavalier about the awful injustice of our healthcare mess.  I was one of the lucky ones back then. I had employer-sponsored health insurance. Still, that didn’t matter. Health insurance is not healthcare. It is a long story, but the insurance company’s networked providers did not include any primary care doctors in state. When I finally found a doctor, it was almost too late. If we had universal primary care, I would not have reached the state where I came close to being “a goner.”  Universal primary care will, of course, not cure every problem in our healthcare system. Critics always cite its costs. But they never count the cost of lives lost or forever scarred because people couldn’t get care at the most vulnerable time in their lives, or had to fight for it through a forest of claim denials, co-pays, deductibles and so on. Why do we keep spending enormous sums to subsidize vast hospital and private insurance company bureaucracies while arguing that publicly funded access to basic care is too expensive?    READ MORE Unlike means-tested public assistance programs, universal primary care would not tell working Vermonters, like me, who pay taxes out of every paycheck, that they earn too much to qualify for the benefits their taxes help support.  I learned the hard way how high these stakes really are. Vermont has an opportunity to build a system that finally puts people first. It’s long past time to choose life over profit or operating revenue — and introduce primary care for all Vermonters. Walter Carpenter Montpelier, Vt. Read the story on VTDigger here: I nearly died because I couldn’t find a primary care doctor. ...read more read less