Current health care system is inaffordable and Vermont plans to be a laboratory for change for the rest of the country.
…with Vermont Governor Peter Shumlin, who is leading efforts to create a single-payer healthcare system in the state. He was voted into office after making single payer a cornerstone of his campaign. “If Vermont can get this right, the other states will follow,” Shumlin says.
From Bloomberg News
Vermont could provide every resident with health insurance, upgrade outdated hospitals and still save money if would just consolidate its “chaotic” health insurance industry into a single-payer health care system, a health consultant told state lawmakers Wednesday.
Harvard health care economist William Hsiao was hired by the state Legislature to come up with three possible designs for a new health care system. He said getting one entity to process claims, reforming medical malpractice and taking other steps would save $2.1 billion in health spending by 2025.
Hsiao said that Vermont faced no fewer than 15 hurdles before it would be able to implement the plan crafted by him and 23 team members, including restrictions contained in the federal health reform bill passed last year and the need to obtain federal waivers.
But he predicted that, within five years, there would be a new push to go beyond last year’s reform at the federal level.
