(This article
was first published on the Yahoo Contributors Network on December 14, 2013)
”Everybody in, nobody out” is the slogan of Vermont’s Single-Payer Health Care
system. Funded through Medicare, Medicaid, an increase in taxes, and through
Vermont’s acceptance of federal funding via Obamacare (ACA), the system will be
operational by 2017. Under
the plan, Vermonters will be able to go to any doctor or hospital in the
state free of charge. There will be no more premiums, deductibles, and copays. There
will be no multifaceted plans to decipher, no insurance forms, and no gotchas
from private insurance providers. Medicare recipients will no longer need to
sort out enrollment options from an inch-thick handbook.
Moreover, when they
receive a pay raise, Vermont’s workers will be pleased to find they will no
longer experience health benefit cost increases that in the past would make any
pay raise in effect null and void.
Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) believes that if Vermont can show that they are
providing cost-effective healthcare for all its residents, taking the
healthcare burden off small business as well, Vermont’s success with a universal
single-payer healthcare system will lead the way for the nation to follow suit.
ACA’s intent at the outset was to enact a law that would put
into place a universal single-payer healthcare system. Instead, ACA was the
result of compromise in order to get the law passed. In the end, not a single
Republican voted for ACA even though the law made many concessions to them,
which became its downside because it still relied on private insurance companies to provide healthcare coverage.
Fortunately, ACA provides
states with the ability to setup their own healthcare plans. It provides states
with federal funds to expand Medicaid. States who choose to expand are able to
implement their own state exchanges (Health Insurance Marketplaces).
(The federal healthcare
exchange was setup to offer healthcare insurance under ACA to the residents of
those states who chose not to expand under ACA.)
That means ACA
opens the door for states to setup their own universal single-payer healthcare
system. But, so far, states that chose to accept federal funding under ACA only
have chosen to offer their own healthcare exchanges. Vermont is the only state
to enact a single-payer plan.
Under Obamacare,
the United States will probably still be the most costly system compared with other
nations, and even though
our healthcare outcomes might improve, outcomes will remain not as good.
So, all eyes should
be on Vermont because the only long-term solution to America's
healthcare crisis is a
single-payer national healthcare program.
Copyright © 2014
Horatio Green
