Single Payer Health Insurance in Vermont

[Sub-Husker]

MONTPELIER, Vermont — You can’t see them. They’re hidden from view and probably always will be. But the health insurance industry’s big guns are in place and pointed directly at the citizens of Vermont.

 

Health insurers were not able to stop the state’s drive last year toward a single-payer health care system, which insurers have spent millions to scare Americans into believing would be the worst thing ever. Despite the ceaseless spin, Vermont lawmakers last May demonstrated they could not be bought nor intimidated when they became the first in the nation to pass a bill that will probably establish a single-payer beachhead in the U.S.

 

When he signed Act 48 into law on May 27, surrounded by dozens of state residents who worked for many years to achieve universal coverage, Governor Peter Shumlin expressed great pride in what had been accomplished. “We gather here today to launch the first single payer system in America, to do in Vermont what has taken too long—to have a health care (system) that is the best in the world, that treats health care as a right and not a privilege, where health care follows the individual, not the employer,” Shumlin said.

 

The problem for Shumlin and his allies is this: it will take five years before Vermont can fully implement its new system, partly because the federal health care reform law prohibits states from undertaking more far-reaching reforms until 2017 unless granted waivers from the feds to do so. And though Vermont’s Congressional delegation is on board to pursue a waiver that would let the state set up a single payer system two years from now, the insurance industry’s friends in Washington are not keen to let that happen. That’s because they want to use those five years to persuade Vermonters that they really don’t want to go the single payer route after all.

 

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/02/08-6#.TzLIiH5uWYg.facebook

[husker_99]

MONTPELIER, Vermont — You can’t see them. They’re hidden from view and probably always will be. But the health insurance industry’s big guns are in place and pointed directly at the citizens of Vermont.

 

Health insurers were not able to stop the state’s drive last year toward a single-payer health care system, which insurers have spent millions to scare Americans into believing would be the worst thing ever. Despite the ceaseless spin, Vermont lawmakers last May demonstrated they could not be bought nor intimidated when they became the first in the nation to pass a bill that will probably establish a single-payer beachhead in the U.S.

 

When he signed Act 48 into law on May 27, surrounded by dozens of state residents who worked for many years to achieve universal coverage, Governor Peter Shumlin expressed great pride in what had been accomplished. “We gather here today to launch the first single payer system in America, to do in Vermont what has taken too long—to have a health care (system) that is the best in the world, that treats health care as a right and not a privilege, where health care follows the individual, not the employer,” Shumlin said.

 

The problem for Shumlin and his allies is this: it will take five years before Vermont can fully implement its new system, partly because the federal health care reform law prohibits states from undertaking more far-reaching reforms until 2017 unless granted waivers from the feds to do so. And though Vermont’s Congressional delegation is on board to pursue a waiver that would let the state set up a single payer system two years from now, the insurance industry’s friends in Washington are not keen to let that happen. That’s because they want to use those five years to persuade Vermonters that they really don’t want to go the single payer route after all.

 

http://www.commondre...H5uWYg.facebook

 

Just because it would work in Vermont doesn't mean it would work in California. Vermont is also a more responsible state and doesn't have massive debt like most others.