Vermont Approves Single-Payer Health Care: 'Everybody in, nobody out' - Occupy Democrats

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About. Damn. Time.

They estimate a twenty five percent savings. Actually that should be possible even with all the state residents covered properly. Fifty percent is possible once the initial catch up period is done. Actually in Canada each province runs it's own health care system. So there are some differences between provinces.

Per capita with all Canadians covered is half the current American expendatures. Even though a lot of people are not covered in the states. Under single payer the doctors can work for much less and still take home the same bucks as their overhead is vastly reduced. Hospital services are billed at cost of course with no profit allowed.

What is not discussed is the deductables,copays etc total eliminations. That may be an additional direct savings to the citizen. A lot of people will be watching Vermont.

I also wonder if it might attract some business to the state. Vermont touches Canada and the physical location has been a thorn for some time I imagine as well.

A citizen of that state must be all to aware of what the actual situation is just to the north. People in close proximity talk. It would be interesting to see the results if having a single payer system option was placed on a state ballot.

I have come to believe that the change over cannot really come through the federal government. I think the insurance companies have that controlled. The best the federal government may do is just to enable it at the state level.

A state by state attack on the health care corporations may be the only way really possible to beat them off.

I hope Vermont is also diligent enough to tackle the drug industry as well. They may have to do this to make it work.That may be a hard one down the road but should be doable. Some state has to be the first to take them on.

There are just too many current problems around the health care issue in America for things not to start happening. It is also too much of a major distraction.

What is not talked about is if the current system where kept more or less intact. It would become an unbearable load on the economy at some point. We Canadians are all too aware of the costs even at half the current Americans per capita cost. How much Vermont actually gains from this move may be dependant on how quickly other states go this way.

My own long held original opinion as a Canadian of the ideal sustainable system. You pay a reasonable rate for office calls out of pocket. Say up to three hundred a year Everything else is covered 100 percent. In Canada this was felt to hurt the poor so it was not adopted. Fifty years later I still think it may have been better.

I think you're right. Focusing on individual states is similar to guerrilla warfare. At the federal level, the insurance companies can amass their forces and carry out a frontal attack. It may be harder to resist when the battle is fought on multiple fronts. Ironically, the Southern hard right would have to agree with this tactic given their ideological commitment to state's rights. The result would be that northern and western states would adopt single payer systems and the advantages would become apparent, drawing away businesses from the south which has been attracting businesses for a long time as a result of strong anti-unionism in the region. So eventually, the South would adopt single payer systems to keep their businesses from leaving.

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1977 300d 70k--sold 08
1985 300TD 185k+
1984 307d 126k--sold 8/03
1985 409d 65k--sold 06
1984 300SD 315k--daughter's car
1979 300SD 122k--sold 2/11
1999 Fuso FG Expedition Camper
1993 GMC Sierra 6.5 TD 4x4
1982 Bluebird Wanderlodge CAT 3208--Sold 2/13

What fabulous news! It's nice to see a state willing to do tho obvious thing to benefit all. The article didn't address how this is paid. Does anyone know the range of taxation increase to finance this?

I bet the insurgence thugs and their lap dogs feel the knife blade this runs into their hearts, and the best element appears that this option, according to the article, is that this is built into the ACA.

buncha dang ol' socialists

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1997 Suzuki Sidekick 4x4
1993 Toyota 4wd Pickup 226K and counting

True. We spent a winter in Vermont and still call it the US experiment in communism.

Our version of the State Motto: Arrive on vacation, leave on probation. Borrowed from people we met there. Everyone we met seemed to be either state employees or their customers. They get people in "The System" and don't let them go.

You probably won't hear much about the fight but I promise you that this won't be pretty. The only way I see a single payer system is if it is privatized. Might be that Wallstreet can properly drain the system without privatization. Promises to be interesting. Glad I'm not there.

"45,000 Americans die every single year because they cannot afford treatment, are you ready for that? That is 15 times the amount of people that died during the September 11, 2001, attacks, or perhaps for you Righty’s out there you would rather see it put this way, 11,250 times the amount of people that died in the Benghazi attack. That equals 5 Americans that die every hour, of every day, of every year because of a preventable illness that was not taken care of due to lack of access and means."

Yet VT also has one of the lowest crime rates in the country, despite unrestricted carry laws (don't even need a permit to carry a pistol). Unemployment is something like 4.5%, much lower than the rest of the country. Good universities. Good schools on average. High political representation per capita. Lots of "crunchy" hippie ladies around Burlington, which I find lovely.

I think I'm moving to VT eventually if I stay in the US! Socialism done right is a great thing.

Where we were you could go almost anywhere on a dirt road or on a snowmobile. It is a cool place but the winters are too long. You gotta like winter activity to live there. I could be happy there.

If you are thinking of living in Vermont, Canada might also be an option. Ottawa is pretty great as cities go.

Pistols are too heavy to carry. I don't even like carrying keys or change. Permits are easy, I have one and rarely use it. I am kinda fond of shotguns these days.

I love winter -- I'm not a snow-phobic ladyboy, and I am an avid skier If I'm to move out of the country, it would likely be to Berlin, not Canada, since as a dual citizen I can legally live/work anywhere in the EU without any pesky application process.

I do love Montreal, though. It also has the advantage of being rabidly non-Anglo, and thus being less poisoned by the Anglo/Dumberican media than the rest of the US and Canada.

Additional costs to the taxpayer of Vermont will depend on many things. Impossible to tell at this point how it will be structured. Lesser overall cost is the goal though.

Other that in my opinion private insurance for profit and control will not be involved at all. All the people in the state covered should require about 3/4 of the old cost initially is not a bad guess.

Once the general health condition of the state is caught up for everyone it should decline to about half the cost. I was considering the possible lack of enough medical personal to meet the initial rush of needs. Phasing the system in because of work load may be the largest issue.

New additional doctors to the state may not be a problem. Some of them have to be totally fed up with external forces that semi control their practices today. Under universal care a doctor cannot just uproot and go to the state. He or she has to wait for a billing number to be available.

Usually this is controlled by having assigned billing numbers for any doctors position in universal care systems. You need one to bill the system. Vermont has to be smart enough to keep health for profit companies out of the loop or it would fail.

Anyways I suspect they will implement the real deal. It would be politically and practically impossible to do otherwise for state politics.

And better one billing number than ten billing numbers for different private insurance companies...

Productivity is much higher per doctor or they have much shorter hours to practice for the same take home pay. So they will love it as long as the state has enough sense to let them alone to perform their function.

Time spent on the phone becomes a minumin in their practices. Also their overhead becomes much less usually.

I could google it, but would rather hear from those who hang here.

In short, simple terms, what is "single payer" ?

Thanks for your time.

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Mike Murrell
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Because of so many distortions the term single payer to me is kinda meaningless. For general conversation though it is considered one source pays all the claims. A common thing in any universal health care scheme usually.

What is important under universal health care schemes is a card is issued to each family . You present this card to any hospital or doctor and there are no run arounds co pays or exceptions usually the bill is just paid.

I am a Canadian and have lived under a universal health system for fifty years. They are not perfect but if anyone thinks private for profit is perfect they also have a lot to learn.

The real difficulty now politically is for the republicans even to survive once these systems get going in the states. It will become all too obvious what they have done.

I have been following the situation in the states for a long time now. It should spread like wildfire once it gets going. You as a citizen no longer are concerned in any way over the personal cost of healthcare or many other spins around it. Everyone is basically treated the same.

The teething problems will be a little greater in Americas case as it is very late to the game. Cost is usually somewhat hidden as there are no premium bills. Or in some cases if they are they are almost inconsequential in comparison to health for profit systems. One way or another the cost is usually derived from many areas of taxation instead.

It is fair to state that poor people would in reality pay less overall as they contribute less to taxation. Since this is well known I suspect this may have been part of the republicans problems with a universal system. They were shortsighted though as without a universal system at todays state of medicine things would spin out of control in my opinion is certain. Some universal systems like British Columbia and perhaps some other provinces in Canada change a very small monthly premium. I live in Nova Scotia and pay no add on premium.

To maintain universal health care systems long term is a challenge. Under for profit systems could take a country down financially by absorbing too much of the gnp. It is no walk in the park for the universal systems but they are learning preventative medicine now.

As for it being socialist in nature is a red herring. It is the only way for all citizens to have a chance long term of equal health care I suspect. No matter what you call it.

Once established it is certain death for any political party to do much with it except fine tune it. The populations will not tolerate it. So the cost of it always remains a problem for governments. Contrasting this with the problems for the citizens that have occurred under the profit based system. There is no comparison.

Americans are not out of the woods even when universal health care is established. They still have the American prescription drug cartels to deal with. A universal system cannot tolerate any excessive profiteering in any sector. You are paying on average three or more times for prescription drugs than what I pay.

This may be just as hard to beat down as getting universal health care in place. We are talking trillions of dollars of potential lost profit by them here. Still once again no country in todays world can really afford this existing. I believe the insurance companies will hang on to this area to some extent as they have in Canada. A lot of Canadians like ourselves paid blue cross until age 65. Premium was 100.00 per month for a family. Co pay in our case was five dollars per prescription. Now that we are over 65 we pay a third of the cost of the prescription but do not forget the prescription is about only one third the cost as well. The blue cross premium included glasses and dental as well to be fair.

All I am really certain of is in general ten years from now if you asked a Vermont citizen if they wanted to go back to the old days you would get no support. No country to my knowledge has ever managed to screw up a universal health care system yet. Lets hope Americans do not.

I can see one scenario if the other states do not move fast though. Some people have serious ongoing expensive medical conditions. Will some of them try to move to Vermont? I suspect this may be a possibility so that may have to be dealt with.

The nice thing? If one state goes they all go I suspect. Or massive premium reduction by private insurers as a counter move may occur. I have not been able to get my mind around their actual profit amounts other than it is much more that many think I believe. To my way of thinking the profits of insurers are so large they may fight like hell to retain the cash cow. There is little doubt that since Vermonts announcement they are already doing something. This is such a cash cow it could not be otherwise.

This begs the question is it ethical in the name of capitalisim to attack the citizens best interests? I hope instead they just start downsizing and taking their money with them as religion has done in my time instead.