Editor’s note: This commentary is by Peter Sterling, the director of Vermont Leads, a nonprofit organization working to educate the public about the advantages of implementing a publicly funded, universal access health care system in Vermont.
[I] agree with the main point made by Blue Cross Blue Shield of Vermont’s Don George: the way we currently pay for health care is unfair to businesses and health care providers and it unnecessarily makes health care more expensive.
Unfortunately, the solution isn’t the one Mr. George proposes.
Simply throwing more of our tax dollars for increased payments to hospitals and health care providers is like painting over the rusty spots on your car so it can pass inspection: it may look good for a very short time but it’s not fixing the root cause of the problem.
Thanks to the leadership of Gov. Peter Shumlin and the Legislature, Vermont is now on a path to truly control the cost of care while making sure everyone has insurance. It’s called Green Mountain Care and it’s a single taxpayer-funded plan that every Vermonter is eligible for.
In the health care “marketplace,” competition has not only failed to decrease medical bills but in fact have led to skyrocketing costs.
Under Green Mountain Care, set to begin in 2017, every Vermont resident would be automatically enrolled in the same plan with the same high quality benefits. No more waiting periods or getting coverage dropped because you missed a premium payment. Your health care would be paid for the same way you pay for police, fire services and schools out of your taxes.
Imagine calling the police department to report a break-in only to be told they can’t come to your house because you were unable to pay your police premium? That’s essentially what we ask people to do now for their health care needs.
The basic numbers for Green Mountain Care add up to real savings for all Vermonters (as a state we are currently spending about $2.6 billion year on health care). The Shumlin administration’s projection is that we can replace this with an approximately $2 billion tax package to pay for Green Mountain Care, a roughly $500 million decrease in how much we all pay for health care. We’ll spend less money to get better results because, unlike the current broken system everyone gets covered. If you lose your job, graduate college or if you work some place that does not offer health benefits, Green Mountain Care covers you. That’s very good news for all of us, especially the roughly 40,000 Vermonters that go uninsured every year.
It’s important to remember how we ended up with our broken system: for decades, we’ve relied on competition between insurance companies with the government covering the people the private market didn’t find profitable, namely the poor (Medicaid) and the elderly (Medicare). While the private market is very effective at driving down the cost of consumer goods, like TVs, it really doesn’t work for delivering health care to sick people. Look at it this way, if your wife is having a stroke, you don’t comparison shop for emergency room prices, you just want the closest one to save her life.
In the health care “marketplace,” competition has not only failed to decrease medical bills but in fact have led to skyrocketing costs. With multiple insurers comes various plans and different deductibles, co-pays, provider rates, etc., adding layers of complexity and cost that we all end up paying for. One basic fact highlights this: government programs spend significantly less on administration than the private sector, about five cents of every dollar under Medicare and anywhere from 10 to 12 cents per dollar in the private market.
And Vermont state government has an exceptional track record of getting people enrolled in Dr. Dynasaur, which is very similar to a system like the proposed Green Mountain Care — it’s a single plan that is entirely publicly financed that is open to every child under a certain poverty level. Its 97 percent enrollment rate is largely due to its low cost (there are no deductibles or co-pays for its services) and high quality of care delivered to enrollees.
While it is very easy to be confused or have your eyes glaze over at all the numbers and statistics being thrown about when it comes to health care reform, one idea, embraced by every other industrialized country in the word, seems to always float to the top — the only way to guarantee that everyone has access to affordable, high quality health care is through a universal, publicly financed system such as Green Mountain Care.
