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Saturday, December 20, 2014

Single Payer Health Care?


For John, BLUFI think Single Payer changes health care for the worse for many Americans, without much helping the rest.  Nothing to see here; just move along.



From Politico we have an examination of single payer health care in Vermont, by Ms Sarah Wheaton.  The title is "Why single payer died in Vermont" The lede and more:
Vermont was supposed to be the beacon for a single-payer health care system in America. But now its plans are in ruins, and its onetime champion Gov. Peter Shumlin may have set back the cause.

Advocates of a “Medicare for all” approach were largely sidelined during the national Obamacare debate.  The health law left a private insurance system in place and didn’t even include a weaker “public option” government plan to run alongside more traditional commercial ones.

So single-payer advocates looked instead to make a breakthrough in the states.  Bills have been introduced from Hawaii to New York; former Medicare chief Don Berwick made it a key plank of his unsuccessful primary race for Massachusetts governor.

Vermont under Shumlin became the most visible trailblazer.  Until Wednesday, when the governor admitted what critics had said all along: He couldn’t pay for it.

“It is not the right time for Vermont” to pass a single-payer system, Shumlin acknowledged in a public statement ending his signature initiative.  He concluded the 11.5 percent payroll assessments on businesses and sliding premiums up to 9.5 percent of individuals’ income “might hurt our economy.”

The question is, is this a speed bump or the end of the road?

Hat tip to Memeorandum.

Regards  —  Cliff

1 comment:

Neal said...

Single payer is at once a symptom and an objective of progressivism. I use the derivative of "progressive" purposely simply because I believe that "liberal" has been woefully misused to describe not only a political world view, but one that embodies a life philosophy. As such then, the agonies of trying to implement single payer are not symptoms of its demise, but are speed bumps.
The progressive zeitgeist dreams of total equality among the world population as implemented and nurtured by a one world government. That is their light on the horizon, and they will never cease in trying to reach their special nirvana.

Sadly for them however is the reality that the mathematics of providing everyone with everything they need, or want, is dependent on a revenue stream that quickly dries up. The question rapidly boils down to who will make and deliver goods and services to a population that is equally deserving of and entitled to everything. Either wages must be paid for the labor, or the labor must be free, and in the purely communal approach to living, neonirva as it were, that labor is essentially free which of course then creates its own INEQUALITY. There will be workers who provide the goods and services that are entitlements for all, and there will be those who only consume those goods and services. Wages for labor are essentially illusory in that the government will quickly consume those wages in order to "pay" for the next production cycle.