I have been an employer, a job creator, if you will for thirty years, and I am perfectly fine with being burdened with 2/3’s of the cost of this program.
My question is this: Where are the howls of protest? There have been forty something attempts to repeal Obamacare. I live in Durango Colorado and I haven’t heard one word or have seen an advertisement against Single Payer Healthcare.
What’s up with that?
Wealthy individuals will probably pay more, but aside from them I think everyone else will come out neutral or ahead.
So from a financial POV, it is really not a lot of people who will end up paying more. Single payer is cheaper than the current system, so that is expected.
It appears that polls currently show it will pass. While I agree that a single-payer system is needed, I’m not sure it’s workable in only one state. I read the text of the amendment online. From a business standpoint, it looks to me like it should reduce workers compensation premiums because the government is accepting the burden of healthcare under those statutes. Really, as far as the law is concerned, I noticed only one glaring omission: there’s no attempt to mitigate the cost of malpractice insurance by curbing lawsuits. At some point, there will be an effort to control costs and when the docs feel the squeeze, that will probably become necessary or at least some will move to other states, perhaps creating a shortage. And certainly, it won’t work unless you bar new arrivals from the plan for some period of time. Otherwise, Colorado may become a mecca for the sick from states which allow them to languish untreated.
Why wouldn’t it work in only one state? Sick people from other states may flock there, and a state of 6 million may not have bargaining power. Are there other reasons.
What I’m afraid of is medical companies trying to destroy Colorado care by blacklisting the state. Refusing to sell medicine or medical devices to the state to intimidate other states that may push for single payer.
The battle for single payer is just beginning.
I think the biggest problems are the ones I mentioned.
I don’t see that happening.
It worked for only one Province in Canada.
In fact, it worked so well that other provinces followed the lead, then it became the national plan.
And there were indeed some cases where sick people moved to Saskatchewan to get coverage. But most people have family, jobs, homes, etc. that make it hard to up and move.
More relevant were moves by businesses from neighboring provinces into there, These businesses found that they were better off under the provincial single-payer health plan, even though they had to pay to support it. At least, their costs were known & stable, they didn’t have to spend time administering a company plan, and their employees were satisfied.
Personally, I think that it was the pressure from their businesses that pushed other provinces to adopt similar single-payer plans.
Yes, it started in one province and spread. For reasos I don’t fully understand, VT toyed with the idea and many people were enthusiastic, but some threats from insurance companies made them withdraw the idea. And VT has a significant network of community health centers that would have made a natural core of care.
I predict that is one state finally instituted a single-payer system it would soon spread to all states outside the south. Southerners would see too much of the benefits going to them, which has been the rock on which most social welfare programs have foundered.
VT abandoned it because it involved large tax hikes.
I think the real momentum behind single payer will pick up when a large state like NY or CA passes it.
Yeah, VT couldn’t pull it off because of the taxes involved; that, and (to my understanding) because the US has no mechanism in place to control the absurdly high prices of drugs. Steven Brill’s book America’s Bitter Pill talks a lot about that issue and how it was basically the glaring flaw in the legislative push to pass the ACA.
There’s no reason why a SP plan cannot work and then spread nationally. But here’s the thing: it needs to actually be enacted and put into practice for such spread to actually happen. I.e., SP needs to move beyond a legislative agenda item (i.e., VT) or a passing ballot initiative (CO) so that people can experience it and see that they’re demonstrably better off.
But yeah, the absence of opposition to this is interesting. I guess it’s a sign of the times, if anything.
I hope it passes.
Politics in Colorado has a tendency to be like submarine warfare – long periods of silence, punctuated by occasional explosions.
Them!? Insects do get big in Dixie.