2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: Why didn't Bernie get Vermont to pass single payer? [View all]MaggieD
(7,393 posts)And we have a ways to go before the penalties are significant enough to get to 95% or more - which is needed to reduce costs. In addition, we have health care providers learning to live with and subsist on much lower reimbursement. That doesn't happen overnight either. Health care providers - physicians, hospitals, clinics, labs, etc are actually not very good at "business."
Also remember, almost 50% of us have employer based health insurance. So moving to single payer requires a huge shift in that regard as well.
It would be economically disastrous to move much faster than we are. Don't get me wrong - I am anxious for single payer as well. My personal opinion is that commercial insurance adds not one whit of value to the equation of healthcare. However, it does provide a hell of a lot of jobs.
Regardless, single payer would be a huge, monumental change, and if not accomplished incrementally it would very likely fail. IMO.
We're on the same page, primarily. I just think it is more complicated than many assume. It would have been a lot less fraught if we had done it in the 90's but we didn't. (I do health care policy and consultation for a living).