This week on the VPR Cafe, Ric Cengeri talks with free lance writer Melissa Pasanen about the New England Tradition of baked beans - and how we bake them.

A week ago it appeared that a comprehensive health care bill being considered by the House Health Care committee was in big trouble. But in a dramatic turn of events, the house committee voted the bill out this week. VPR's Peter Biello speaks with Bob Kinzel about the sudden change.

The death in Hanover last week of Everett Koop reminded Tom Blinkhorn of a series of interviews he had with the late Surgeon General of the United States, one of the nation's leading pediatric surgeons.

Current medical reports predict that Baby Boomers will live longer than their parents but be less healthy, with sedentary work lives partly to blame. Mary McCallum passes along a simple suggestion.

Alan Graham, Vermont's new new state entomologist, Alan Graham, talks about his new post.

We get a peak at the 130 species of ants that roam around New England, meet Vermont's new state entomologist, and reach into our listener mailbag.

Maple Sugaring season is fast approaching. On this first episode of the VPR Cafe, Ric talks with Candy Page about what the new international maple grading system means for producers and consumers. She also brings us into Ginger Isham's kitchen in Williston where maple is king.  

C. Everett Koop, who raised the profile of the nation's surgeon general by speaking frankly about AIDS and the dangers of smoking, has died at his home in Hanover.

VPR's Hamilton Davis analyzes Vermont's efforts to establish a health care exchange.

Like the popular children's book said: everyone poops. But what happens to it all afterwards? We'll learn all about septic systems, wastewater treatment, and some innovative methods of dealing with that stuff everyone has, and nobody wants.

The Vermont Senate voted Tuesday afternoon to advance legislation that allows terminally ill patients to end their lives with prescription drugs. A number of senators who were undecided on the issue made up their minds to support it over the weekend.

The Shumlin administration has agreed to restore some of the cuts it made to reimbursement rates for Medicaid mental health providers.

The Vermont Senate Tuesday turns to end-of-life choices. As state senators debate a bill that would give patients with less than six months to live the choice to end their lives with doctor-prescribed drugs, Vermont has emerged as a key battleground in the national debate over the issue.

The Senate is set to debate a bill next week allowing terminally ill patients to get a doctor's prescription to end their lives.  The bill was moved to the full Senate with an unusual vote by the Judiciary Committee.

The Green Mountain Care Board has set forth a tentative target inflation rate of 4 percent for Vermont's 14 hospitals for the coming fiscal year, a target that would add about $85 million to the current statewide spending level of $2.136 billion. The final system increase will depend on the board's decisions on the individual hospitals' requests.

We set the record straight on the elusive little predator called the fisher and Karen Tronsgard Scott, executive director of the Vermont Network Against Domestic and Sexual Violence, provides her perspective on the Violence Against Women Act.   

A key Senate committee approved a bill Friday that would permit terminally ill patients to end their lives with a prescription medication.

The connection Vermonters have with nature flourishes in winter as well as warmer times. Tom Slayton proved that point recently when he spent the day birdwatching along the shore of Lake Champlain.

Rich Nadworny is aware that teaching your children is never easy, but lately he's been wondering what makes us do or teach our kids certain things.

The Vermont Senate Health and Welfare Committee has started its week-long review of one of the most controversial and emotional issues of the session. A bill under consideration would allow physicians to prescribe drugs to help terminally ill people end their lives.

Ted Williams, a contributing editor to Audubon Magazine, talks about alternatives to using poison to combat rodents.

Forty years ago this weekend, then National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger and Vietnamese politburo member Le Duc Tho signed the Paris Peace Accords, ending the Vietnam War. Suzanne Spencer Rendahl, a daughter of that war, reflects on its legacy in her family's struggle with post-traumatic stress disorder.

The odor of scorched tires, faint but unmistakable, figuratively hung over last week's meeting between the Green Mountain Care Board and representatives of Vermont's hospitals. For the first time, the rubber began hitting the road on health care cost containment in the state, the linchpin of Governor Peter Shumlin's single payer reform initiative.

Officials from Burlington's Fletcher Allen Health Care, Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center and other hospitals serving Vermont have joined to create the nation's first statewide accountable care organization. Friday's announcement means about 42,000 of Vermont's 118,000 Medicare beneficiaries will get their care from the new entity.

The board that oversees health care in Vermont is looking at health issues affecting the state's undocumented farm workers. The Legislature asked the Green Mountain Care Board to estimate how much it would cost to include the undocumented migrant workers in a universal coverage plan.