“Should they succeed in blocking reform, Republicans should take no consolation. When Congress next attempts reform, in a decade or more, health costs and the number of uninsured and underinsured will have escalated — and the likely outcome will be the single-payer system that Republicans most abhor.”
(William F. Pewen is a former senior health policy adviser for Senator Olympia Snowe, Republican of Maine.)
William Pewen expresses the view of the majority of well-informed moderates and conservatives: the likely eventual outcome of further deterioration in health care financing will be a single payer system, like it or not.
Although they may be opposed to single payer based on ideology, they understand simple math. A decade from now a family with an income of $100,000 will not be able to pay an insurance premium of $25,000 plus a $25,000 deductible plus a coinsurance of 30% of the balance of the medical expenses.
What is Single Payer?
It is a publicly financed, universal health care system, sometimes called Medicare for All or National Health Insurance.
Some single payer systems (such as that in Great Britain and, though we don’t often think about this, the U.S. Veterans Administration) also employ the doctors and fund the hospitals. But most single payer advocates in the U.S. want a system that will simply pay the bills from a single source and cover everyone. Doctors and hospitals will remain in the private sector, and will send their bills to the single payer.
All your questions about single payer answered here by Physicians for a National Health Program
Is health care a right or a privilege? What do you think? Is it OK that 18,000 people die each year in the U.S. because they don’t have access to care?