Reply #10: Vermont’s Single-Payer Salvation [View All]

[Demeter]

http://inthesetimes.org/article/7052/vermonts_single-payer_salvation/


...On February 8, newly inaugurated Democratic Gov. Peter Shumlin unveiled his plan for a publicly funded single-payer healthcare system, which was introduced into the state’s legislature. If enacted, which appears likely, it will be the first system of its kind in the United States and Vermont would become the first state to abolish most forms of private health insurance...Last year, lawmakers passed a bill to hire a team of consultants led by Hsiao—an economist who helped to develop universal healthcare plans in China and reform Medicare and Medicaid in the 1970s—to design a new healthcare system for the Green Mountain State. According to Hsiao’s research, about 32,000 people, or roughly five percent of the state’s population, would still be uninsured after federal reform measures take full effect in 2014. (Fifty seven thousand, or 9 percent, of Vermonters are currently uninsured.)...What Hsiao and his team ended up recommending to the state was a single-payer system that would ensure coverage for all residents. An independent public body would oversee the system and contract out administration of all claims. Private insurers could compete for this work, as they have done for years to administer the state’s Medicare program. The bill, currently in committee, would take an estimated three to six years to implement.


The introduction of the healthcare bill comes in the first months of Democratic Gov. Peter Shumlin’s first term in office, which follows eight years of Republican rule under Gov. Jim Douglas. Shumlin supported a single-payer healthcare system during his campaign, calling Vermont’s current system “broken.” Anya Rader Wallack, the special assistant to Shumlin on healthcare, cited waste and “craziness” as factors troubling the state’s current healthcare system during testimony before Vermont House and Senate committees on February 8. Three private insurance carriers operate in Vermont, along with Medicare and Medicaid and various suppliers of workers’ compensation insurance, a structure Wallack called “misguided.”

Dr. Deborah Richter, president of Vermont for Single Payer, which has advocated for a new health system since 2003, says that “on the whole” the group supports Hsiao’s plan. “Estimates are that Hsiao’s system will not only be able to cover everybody, but for less money,” Richter says. “Vermont is uniquely poised to get this done.”

The state cannot “get this done,” however, unless it receives a waiver from the federal government to bypass the federal reform legislation. Shumlin thinks that won’t be a problem; Vermont’s entire congressional delegation—Sens. Bernie Sanders (I) and Patrick Leahy (D) and Rep. Peter Welch (D)—support the single-payer effort and introduced a measure to allow states to receive waivers from federal reform requirements as soon as 2014, as long as they cover as many uninsured people as federal law would. (They currently have to wait until 2017.) On February 28, President Barack Obama told state governors he would support the earlier date.

Hsiao seems optimistic. “I can say with full confidence that your broken system can be fixed,” Hsiao counseled Vermont lawmakers. “But we require you to…adopt the right solution.”