Vermont ends single payer bid: Feds now left to confront the issue
By John E. McDonough
CommonWealth, December 23, 2014
Many American dislike the Affordable Care Act not because it goes too far but because it does not go far enough. About 24 percent of Americans believe the ACA should be expanded, and by that, many mean a Medicare-for-All single payer financing scheme that takes insurance companies out of the equation.
Since the ACA is nothing like single payer, for four years now, the candle in the window for single payer advocates has stood in the governor’s office in the Vermont State House. Gov. Peter Shumlin got elected in 2010 promising to bring a single payer health financing scheme to Vermont, and various people in his administration have been hard at work figuring how to make it happen. Last Wednesday, though, Shumlin snuffed out the candle, admitting that he couldn’t make the numbers work.
So what is single payer’s future? Like all good Democrats, I harken to the words of my late boss, Sen. Kennedy: “…the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die.”
Today, in the United States, we have three-plus mega-health insurance programs in Medicare, Medicaid, and the new ACA subsidy/exchange structure. Medicare is actually two programs when you count Medicare Advantage. Medicaid is nearing 70 million covered lives. And as employer coverage continues its 25 year plummet, the ACA subsidized exchange world is going to grow in size and importance.
It may take 5, 10, 15 years, or even longer – but at some point, some Republicans and Democrats will propose federal health insurance consolidation. The illogic and wastefulness of running these enormous, siloed health insurance behemoths will become clear – that will be the backdoor start and momentum will grow.
The Vermont failure, I believe with regret, signals the end of serious efforts to achieve single payer at the state level. It’s too big a lift, economically and politically. Shumlin inadvertently blew out the candle.
At the federal level, I do expect it – but through the backdoor, not the front, and no time soon.
John McDonough is a professor at the Harvard School of Public Health and the author of Inside National Health Reform.
http://www.commonwealthmagazine.org/Voices/Perspective/Online-Perspectives-2014/Fall/028-Vermont-ends-single-payer-bid.aspx
****
Comment:
By Don McCanne, MD
John McDonough is one of the nation’s most astute observers of health care reform. We can take solace in his prediction that the entire nation will eventually achieve single payer reform, while regretting that it will be a slow process.
For those who differ, prove him wrong.
