I am a Native Vermonter, the Dean administration tried the “single payor plan” some years ago and the result was fewer choices and higher premiums for us. Shumlin and the rest of the “dummies” in Montpelier don’t even know how they are going to pay for this thing.
There will be a big shift – most of the present $5 billion for VT healthcare is paid privately, largely (for now) by employers. But the present system, even under full blown Obamacare, is designed to keep health insurers profitable even though the “invisible hand” is slowly pushing them out of existence. The shift to tax-paid healthcare from employer-paid will indeed entail a big tax increase, but employers and private citizens will no longer have to pay for purchasing a policy from an insurer. This will cost less per person than what those policies cost now, because the present $5 billion includes a big sum – maybe $1.5 billion – paid for armies of denial clerks. The “invisible hand” puts them there so insurance policy costs are minimized, and it simply pays competitive private insurers to deny treatment. Result: private insurers charge a markup of 45% over the cost of healthcare they actually pay for. Not because they are stupid or lazy or greedy, but because they are smart, and that big markup yields lowest overall cost for them.
Which is the main reason for single payer: get rid of inefficient denials, focus on minimizing true healthcare costs. Stop sending some $1.5 billion permanently out of state every year, wasting it on useless treatment denials, just to prop up the moribund health insurers.
We already have denials in the Medicare system, and with single payer you have fewer choices. How do you fund this system? Someone has to pay for it, and that someone is you and I in higher taxes or higher premiums. Any money comming from the Feds comes with “a hook” so beware. The cost of access to quality health care will continue to rise and there “ain’t no free lunch”
A single-payer system costs less than the system we have here in the US. Other countries with different systems like Switzerland and Australia have far lower costs per person.
Governor Deans plan is Dr Dinasaur. It’s a childrens plan and is quite successful. Governor Shumlin’s plan models the Quebec Plan.
The cost in Quebec is 2.6% of payroll. Everyone in, no one out. The system has been in place since 1974, and works well. Quebec costs are roughly 40% of U.S. cost with better statistical (ei Life expectancies, mortality rates, cancer rates, etc) results.
Vermont is close to Quebec, and once the pshychological voodoo vanishes, single payer makes a lot of sense.
I still can’t understand why the average peasant insists on providing Wall Street with its 10% up front. If a peasant can please explain this.
(I just left a comment, which disappeared as I tried to enter it).
I am thankful for the enormous dedication, to the People of Vermont and to the rest of the USA, of Governor Shumlin, Senator Bernie Sanders, Dr. Deb Richter and countless other Progressives I cannot name, who were instrumental in getting this Single Payer Bill to be enacted first in Vermont. It certainly must not have been easy. The ACA can be viewed as an emergency measure to answer the our failed health system. It is not the answer. That answer is only Single Payer, but unfortunately the laissez-faire, play-ball approach towards big health insurance and pharmaceutical corporations has long allowed our health care here in the USA to deteriorate. The USA significantly is the only developed nation in the world without a universal healthcare system in place and our health ranks very low.
AND…it’ll work, just like it does everywhere else.
I am a Native Vermonter, the Dean administration tried the “single payor plan” some years ago and the result was fewer choices and higher premiums for us. Shumlin and the rest of the “dummies” in Montpelier don’t even know how they are going to pay for this thing.
There will be a big shift – most of the present $5 billion for VT healthcare is paid privately, largely (for now) by employers. But the present system, even under full blown Obamacare, is designed to keep health insurers profitable even though the “invisible hand” is slowly pushing them out of existence. The shift to tax-paid healthcare from employer-paid will indeed entail a big tax increase, but employers and private citizens will no longer have to pay for purchasing a policy from an insurer. This will cost less per person than what those policies cost now, because the present $5 billion includes a big sum – maybe $1.5 billion – paid for armies of denial clerks. The “invisible hand” puts them there so insurance policy costs are minimized, and it simply pays competitive private insurers to deny treatment. Result: private insurers charge a markup of 45% over the cost of healthcare they actually pay for. Not because they are stupid or lazy or greedy, but because they are smart, and that big markup yields lowest overall cost for them.
Which is the main reason for single payer: get rid of inefficient denials, focus on minimizing true healthcare costs. Stop sending some $1.5 billion permanently out of state every year, wasting it on useless treatment denials, just to prop up the moribund health insurers.
We already have denials in the Medicare system, and with single payer you have fewer choices. How do you fund this system? Someone has to pay for it, and that someone is you and I in higher taxes or higher premiums. Any money comming from the Feds comes with “a hook” so beware. The cost of access to quality health care will continue to rise and there “ain’t no free lunch”
A single-payer system costs less than the system we have here in the US. Other countries with different systems like Switzerland and Australia have far lower costs per person.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Health_care_cost_rise.svg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthcare_in_Switzerland
Check out those graphs. In health care expenditures per capita, we’re Number One! I usually like America to be Number One, but not this time.
Governor Deans plan is Dr Dinasaur. It’s a childrens plan and is quite successful. Governor Shumlin’s plan models the Quebec Plan.
The cost in Quebec is 2.6% of payroll. Everyone in, no one out. The system has been in place since 1974, and works well. Quebec costs are roughly 40% of U.S. cost with better statistical (ei Life expectancies, mortality rates, cancer rates, etc) results.
Vermont is close to Quebec, and once the pshychological voodoo vanishes, single payer makes a lot of sense.
I still can’t understand why the average peasant insists on providing Wall Street with its 10% up front. If a peasant can please explain this.
(I just left a comment, which disappeared as I tried to enter it).
I am thankful for the enormous dedication, to the People of Vermont and to the rest of the USA, of Governor Shumlin, Senator Bernie Sanders, Dr. Deb Richter and countless other Progressives I cannot name, who were instrumental in getting this Single Payer Bill to be enacted first in Vermont. It certainly must not have been easy. The ACA can be viewed as an emergency measure to answer the our failed health system. It is not the answer. That answer is only Single Payer, but unfortunately the laissez-faire, play-ball approach towards big health insurance and pharmaceutical corporations has long allowed our health care here in the USA to deteriorate. The USA significantly is the only developed nation in the world without a universal healthcare system in place and our health ranks very low.