Tweet
The government of Vermont continues to chug along with their multi-year plan to establish a universal health care system modeled on single payer. The most recent step is that the two chambers of the legislature have approved a new bill creating the health care exchange required by the Affordable Care Act. From the Bennington Banner:
By a 20-7 vote, the Senate approved a House-passed bill that sets up a regulated health care marketplace, or exchange, and requires employers with 50 or fewer workers either to enroll their employees in the exchange or let them do so on their own, taking advantage of federal tax credits or subsidies to help them pay for it.
“It’s our intention to use the … exchange as sort of a pivot point,” said Sen. Claire Ayer, D-Addison and chairwoman of the Senate Health and Welfare Committee, in an interview after the Senate vote. “We want to take full advantage of it in terms of helping us define some of our cost-saving processes, develop our health information technology and get ourselves on a path to a single-pipe payer.”
The eventual plan in Vermont is to create a universal public health insurance system, but the Affordable Care Act doesn’t allow states to apply for a total wavier to create a better system until 2017. This means Vermont is required to create an exchange for 2014, which the state will try to use as a stepping stone for implementing their full plan in 2017, if they receive the necessary waivers.
As part of this long term plan, the bill will require individuals and small businesses to purchase insurance only through the newly created exchange. The hope is to get a high level of participation in the exchange and maximize the amount the federal government will provide the state.
The ACA’s continuing unpopularity means federal Democrats mostly avoided the issue of health care and have effectively given up on promising to improve the law. That means for the foreseeable future the best hope for getting progressive reforms will probably come from the states.
18 Comments
Support this site!
Subscribe to the newsletter
Advertise on Firedoglake
Send
us your tips
Make us your homepage
About FDL Action
MIT’s Gruber, of Obama care, played an important role in designing VT’s plan.
So how do these exchanges work? if you have employer paid health care. I still pay $80 a month and I know my institution (Univ of Utah) pays something like $400 a month.
In a true single payer, would employees with employer paid be given the option to stay in a private plan or required to buy into what the state offers?
It seems to be the same amount of BS like Unnafordable Obamacare,only at state level,there is still a mandate without universal or options,insurers thieves and nothing like single payer from the very beginning..je.!
They won’t.
The way I discovered that Gruber is involved was at the very beginning when I was trying to figure out how VT would do cost saving. So I was into the weeds on some of the “research” that accompanying it. Didn’t have to go very far before I found Gruber’s presence.
Gave up further investigation as a waste of time.
A true single payer usually gets funded by payroll taxes. Everyone pays an extra x% of their income in healthcare tax that goes into a pool, whether you want it or not. Then, when you need to see a doctor or go to the hospital, it’s paid for from the pool, often with a deductible and co-pay.
It’s possible that employers could still provide “supplemental” coverage for their employees that would cover the deductible and co-pays or other uncovered expenses.
Vermont has a strong, viable and active third party movement. The Vermont Progressive Party. In Canada, they have a strong viable and UNAFRAID response to the corporate duopoly called the NDP. Canada has Single Payer.
Ned I say more? Or are self styled “progressives” going to still cling like barnacles of the USS Titanic known as the Democratic Party?
alan….alan…..you’ve been holdin’ out on us. THis plan sounds BRILLIANT and SIMPLE. Could you write is up in about 3,800 pages and 790,000 words and we’ll see if we can use it to replace ACA when the SCOTUS throws the current plan out?????
I could expand it, but I’d probably have to change x% to xx%. Hopefully not xxx%.
Unless you can afford a Cadillac plan you will be on single payer eventually because we are bankrupting the sick and the poor and the lower middle class as we speak. 50 million without health insurance of any kind and 30-50 million hanging by a thread financially with monthly health premiums that rival or exceed their mortgage or rent.
To remind you, I was in New Zealand when I suffered multiple fractures of my left leg. THEIR health plan provided me surgery and hospitalization for 6 days as visitors are automatically “included” like citizens if they have no other coverage. Only thing was I was in a “ward” with three other guys, had no TV, and I had to knit a pair of wool socks while I was in the hospital.
If I may, I’m the administrator here. We have a group of 50 and our plan renewal is next month. Our $5,000 deductible plan with United Healthcare goes up from $407 to $444/month. Spouses now $489.00. The boss only pays $300/mo. But check this out….UHC sent me a quote for a small group of 12 by mistake. Their plan with $2,500 deductible was $689 for employees under age 45 yrs and went up to $1119 for employees 55+.
30 pages.
alan1tx is just joking about the xx and xxx% because he knows there are lots of different options for cost savings and funding (hi alan1tx – all in the spirit of our usual good debate, I hope !). The real xxx% comes with the cost of private insurance with or without the ACA – projected to surpass average annual income by 2037.
On the “bright” side, if things continue to go as they have been, won’t MOST of the middle class and ALL of the poor be eligible for Medicaid by 2029???
Hey another idea would be to start going to Vets !! I think they could be alot cheaper and they make house calls too !!!
Stop! Yer’ killin’ me!
I shattered my wrist playing soccer and my dog’s vet was on our team. He taped me up real good until I could get to the emergency room.
Right. That’s why I used x’s. Don’t feel like wrangling over then numbers again.
Maybe it would be best to revisit this in a couple of months once we find out how much of ACA blows up, or not, at SCOTUS’ hands. Right now the entire context is clear as mud, pie in sky.