Single-payer insurance drive is showing little sign of life
Boston Business Journal
April 4, 2002
By Linda Goodspeed
Yet even now that there's a commission looking at funding streams and options for achieving universal coverage, few think single-payer is the right course. Many believe the incremental expansions the state (Massachusetts) has enacted over the past decade, which have brought the state's uninsured rate to one of the lowest in the nation (about 7 percent of the entire population and less than 2 percent of children) is working.
State Sen. Richard Moore, D-Uxbridge, co-chairman on the joint legislative Committee on Health Care:
"Right now we have about 7 percent of the population uninsured. We're looking at a significant tax increase to get at those 7 percent by going to a single-payer system."
"Nothing will happen around single-payer health care in the current legislative session. We can't afford it."
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Comment: Sen. Moore has failed to acknowledge the cost savings of replacing the health plans with a single payer system. It is simply not true that Massachusetts "can't afford" to shift the wasted resources in the current system to filling in the voids in funding the delivery of health care services. Shifting funding to the tax system might be a "tax increase," but for most individuals, it would be a net reduction in their health care costs. Using tax rhetoric to hide the beneficial impact of single payer reform is deceptive, if not outright dishonest.