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Thursday, September 20, 2012

Health Care Reform Articles - September 20, 2012


Vermont could be first in line for single payer
By: Joanne Kenen
September 17, 2012 04:28 AM EDT
Most governors are, at best, slogging their way through the world of health reform implementation. Vermont’s Gov. Peter Shumlin is hurtling through it.
Vermont is the only state to have set itself on a path to a single-payer health care system, using the national health care law as a jumping-off point.
Shumlin can’t get there by 2014. He may not get there by 2017, when states get more flexibility under the health law to design their own health care systems. He may not get there at all.
But he believes that even small states must aim big.
“It’s a mistake for our public policymakers to think we can nibble around the broken system,” he told POLITICO in an interview at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, N.C. He says he wants change and believes that it’s actually easier to bring big change to little states, which he sees as less beholden than larger states and national politics are to special interests.
The rest of the United States has no interest in single payer, of course, not now nor in the near future. Not only did the 2010 health law reject single payer or a public option, its rules and structures prevent a state like Vermont from going single payer, at least at the outset.
But Shumlin’s ready to go — and he doesn’t want the health care law to stand in his way.
“This Vermont boy wants to implement that single-payer health care system tomorrow, and I don’t know why you guys want to stop me from doing that,” Shumlin said at a recent POLITICO health policy panel. “It’s the right thing to do. The rest of the world has figured it out. Let’s grow up and join them.”
The Vermont Legislature and his administration are working on setting up a state health insurance exchange under the health care law. It isn’t single-payer, although it’s often described that way. It’s an exchange. But Vermont is designing its exchange in a way that could be a platform for a state-based single-payer system.
Shumlin argues that his vision is as pragmatic as it is progressive. The efficiencies of a one-payer system will slow health care spending, freeing up dollars for jobs and economic growth, he says
http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=95E02BC4-4F42-4F7F-80EB-D2C89A620AC9

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