‘Single payer’ efforts at state level

Even as lawsuits against the new health care law’s “individual mandate” reach the appellate level, efforts are being made on the state level to create a “single payer” system.

In a “single payer” system, all health care costs would be paid through a government system rather than through insurance companies, allegedly reducing bureaucracy (although how many new government systems have you seen that have “reduced” bureaucracy?). It’s unclear how such a system would affect members of health care sharing ministries, but it would be a direct intrusion into the free market. It also would give government unprecedented control over what treatment you could and couldn’t get.

In 2001, Dr. Michael Glueck and Dr. Robert Cihak wrote:

Political control of health care payments ultimately means political control over health care decision-making. Putting health care decisions into the political arena will subject them to partisan wrangling, and it’s a virtual certainty that, in the end, the politicians will decide they don’t want to spend as much money as patients require or hospitals and physicians need to do their jobs.

Just remember what President Reagan said were the nine most frightening words in the English language: “I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.”

In California:

Democrats in California have revived a bill that would create a single-payer health care system that would provide health care for everyone, including illegal residents. … It would replace President Barack Obama’s health care reform legislation with a more comprehensive system – one its advocates say would cost everyone no more than what we already pay. … Senate Bill 810 would create a public-private partnership to provide every California resident with medical, dental, vision, hospitalization and prescription drug benefits, while still allowing patients to choose their own doctors and hospitals.

And in Vermont, the state’s health care exchange required by the new federal health care law would be used as a way to implement single-payer:

Under the terms of the bill, every resident will be covered under the Green Mountain Care health insurance program. The system outlined under the measure is a single payer program and will go into effect by 2017 if not sooner. According to the bill, the state will first implement a health insurance exchange as mandated by federal health care reform and will then use this exchange as the basis for moving over to a single payer system.

So, while the new federal health care law doesn’t specifically mandate “single payer,” it certainly opens the door for states to head that way.

Update: This is from a Health Care Blog post by Roger Collier:

The versions of the bill passed by Vermont’s House and Senate are each far, far more tentative than committed single payer advocates would wish, and have already been subject to scathing criticism by national single payer advocates. The bill provides for the creation of the legal framework of a public insurance program, to be called Green Mountain Care, but includes no funding mechanism, defines no benefit standards, is vague on the future roles of private insurers, and is silent on exactly how existing federal programs are to be incorporated.