Missouri Foundation for Health
Press Release
November 25, 2003
New Report Details Universal Care for Missouri
The study “A Universal Health Care Plan for Missouri” highlights a coverage plan that could be delivered in the state for less than the nearly $30 billion currently spent on health care this year.
The study, commissioned by the Foundation and carried out by Kenneth.Thorpe, Robert W. Woodruff Professor and Chair of the Department of Health Policy and Management at Emory University in Atlanta, examined the impact of a single payer tax-based system on current health expenditures in Missouri.
The study reviewed three possible benefit levels- similar, better and worse than the current average private health insurance policy in the state. Even the more generous plan under the system proposed by Thorpe would save more than a billion dollars from the current Missouri health expenditures.
The proposed plan would be funded by a payroll tax similar to the way the
Federal Medicare program is funded. Businesses that currently provide health
insurance, and their employees, would pay less in taxes than they do now in
premiums. Employers who do not provide health insurance now would pay more
as would the uninsured who would obtain coverage under the plan.
The savings that would allow expansion to cover all residents of the state would be largely derived from lower administrative costs associated with a single payer.
http://www.mffh.org/press_releases/pr-11-25-03.pdf
The report, “A Universal Health Care Plan for Missouri”:
http://www.mffh.org/ShowMe3.pdf
Comment: You would think that our national policymakers would begin to recognize a pattern here. The single payer model has become the golden standard against which all other models of reform should be compared.
Do we really need another study? Or shall we just finally do it!?