Harvard Health: Single payer healthcare: Pluses, minuses, and what it means for you
Single payer healthcare: Pluses, minuses, and what it means for you
POSTED JUNE 27, 2016, 9:30 AM
Andrea S. Christopher, MD, Contributor
As someone who researches inequities in health care, Ive diligently followed the debate about healthcare reform. However, most of my friends (and I suspect most Americans) wonder exactly what single payer healthcare is and how will it affect them. In a New England Journal of Medicine perspective piece, Jonathan Oberlander, PhD, a professor of social medicine at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, expounds on the history and obstacles facing calls for single payer healthcare reform.
Problems with the current U.S. healthcare system
Oberlander points out that the impetus for reorganizing the entire healthcare system has to do with the regrettable state of healthcare in the United States. Currently, the healthcare finance structure is made of an impressively complicated network of multiple payers, involving both private and government health insurance options. Despite spending more on healthcare than comparable countries, the U.S. has the lowest life expectancy and performs poorly on a variety of health outcomes. Thus, our complex network of insurance plans is wasteful in large part due to high administrative costs and lack of price control.
Inequity is another major problem. The United States remains the only developed country without universal healthcare. The Affordable Care Act has made important gains toward improving and expanding health insurance coverage. However, it was never designed to provide universal healthcare and 30 million Americans remain uninsured.
~Snip~
A way forward
If the major barrier to implementing single payer healthcare in the U.S. is a matter of politics, the pathway forward will require mobilizing public support. A recent poll suggests 58% of Americans support Medicare-for-all. Interestingly, whereas a majority of physicians support transitioning to single payer, they are less likely to believe their colleagues share this opinion. This raises an interesting question of whether the conventional wisdom that it is too difficult to reorganize the healthcare insurance system overshadows actual public opinion....
Read more:
http://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/single-payer-healthcare-pluses-minuses-means-201606279835
Harvard Health: Single payer healthcare: Pluses, minuses, and what it means for you (Original Post)
think
Jun 2016
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