done in 2014... However, the waiver didn't happen and now they have piecemeal together a private market place buy-in until 2017 when states can do as they please in providing health care as they would wish as long as it follows the ACA guidelines or is better than the guidelines. It really sucks for them to have to wait out the next 3 yrs when they could have gone live with single payer in 2014, but you know the greedy insurance co's, they wouldn't want a live model of single payer stories in the lead up to 2014 and 2016 national elections. It wouldn't be in play until after the next Presidential elections. If the Dems and Pres Obama were smart, he would use his pen and create the waiver now for the couple of states who want to open up a single payer direction for their state.
It certainly would shut the republicans up about "socialized medicine" or from creating more ads with lies in them about the horrors of Canada health care. And with a small state like VT, with a really small population, it would work really well as a test model. It would show cities with larger population centers and model that they might want to adopt for their health care needs... If VT can create a working single payer, cheaper model, then a city like NY or Los Angeles could also adopt a similar model if their state refuses to take up the issue. It's those larger population centers that hold a large centrally located people in one area, and have some of the highest costs of medical needs. By having a city that does "single-payer" and takes the burden of health care costs off of the backs of employers, they would have a greater selling point for businesses to decide on coming in and creating jobs. It would also lower the burden of paying the high cost of the uninsured poor and homeless populations that burden the costs of the system.
President Obama, with his mighty pen, could make this happen for states and municipalities if he were to write a waiver into place allowing for this to happen. If there were an item the left should really be asking for him to do, it should be this one... He's already allowed the waiver for small biz to insure their employees and a waiver for another year or so for ins co's to sell sub-standard health care plans that don't cover anything medically and will cause those buying the plans to lose out on everything from basic care to catestrophic issues.
It would be really great to have the financial reports from these particular areas to show the cost of care decreasing, the numbers of people increasing wellness checks and catching problems before they are life threatening, the increase in state's revenue to spend back on people for economic growth, and the numbers of bankruptcies decrease because someone became sick with a costly health issue like cancer, heart disease, or diabetes.
The advantage of a single payer entity only requiring enough money to operate the system, should also allow the states the ability to regulate health care costs (creating a more even, across the board payment system for tests and procedures).. It should also allow them to negotiate better with pharmaceutical companies because they are a combined population of an entire state.
And as the program creates positive finances for the states, the stories by word of mouth about states that are better to live in and create business in percolate around to other states, the more likely a single payer type of system is demanded upon other states by their residents. I don't think it would be too long before states like MA, CT, RI, ME, possibly NH, and NY would begin adopting these types of programs. Once a state like NY, CA, TX, FL, OH, MI adopt a single payer, state run plan, the more likely the rest of the states OR country adopt a single payer initiatives. Larger states with very large population bases (that trend into blue), begin demanding a sane, cheaper, rational pay model for health care, the more likely they will set precedent for the rest of the country... At that point ObamaCare will be marked as the one of the "greats" in bills to ever pass. History books will place the initiative of making health care a "right" that people should expect from cradle to grave, as important as social security, the civil rights act, and Medicare for seniors.
This should also help veterans in the long run from having to utilize a VA type of program... Veterans could live anywhere and see any Drs or professionals that they choose all across America. It would decrease the costs of Veteans Administrations in caring for its Vets with the costs of care for casualty type of care to older Vets needing health care services. It would also take away the costly Tri-Care coverage for service people and their families that is contracted out to private insurance co's for processing, i.e., denying care and medical services for service people and their family. My sister in law does this for Blue Cross; she ONLY processes tri-care patient loads. She has to deny payment reimbursements for families (which she hates because it's effecting families like her own; her husband is in the army). She has kicked back an insurance claims for payment because of a simple coding error by a dr or hospital.. And if the dr or hospital isn't tenacious about re-submitting a proper approval code, then that bill gets re-directed back to the family to pay for out of pocket. It's all a racket. On top of that, Blue Cross is bidding for the contract against other ins co's for a 5yr bid. They have to bid low enough to get the contract, but still try to make money off of our service members and their families... So, every year her "pod" of insurance claim workers, have more claims foisted upon them to process. If they don't process a certain number of claims, they will be written up. Many times they have required, mandatory overtime they have to work to try and get more claims processed for payment (they are normally about 3 - 6mo's behind at any given time). And worse, because they keep trying to bleed the system of every nickel for the ins co revenue, they are given more claims to process. She has worked off paid time to catch her number of claims up to keep her job. And they refuse to hire new people to help out; they only replace people who have left or been fired (with her being a claims processor who works out her home, she can't "move up" a ladder, and she's been there for 16yr, so they are trying to push out anyone who has been there for a long time because they cost more and they still have a "pension" retirement plan, where as the new hires only get 401k's to put money away). Entirely uncecesary, costly way of paying for health care. And now, Paul Ryan wants the families to pay a portion of their tri-care coverage... The same families that many times are recipients of food stamps and other govt programs.
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