Business for Medicare for All, a national group that launched this summer to promote the kind of single-payer plan introduced by Sen. Bernie Sanders, has hired a Vermonter as its first employee.
Dan Barlow, the former policy manager for Vermont Business for Social Responsibility, started in August as executive director of the new nonprofit. The group now has 350 members, and Barlow’s goal is to have 10,000 businesses from all 50 states signed up by January 2021.
Businesses typically pay about $6,000 annually for an individual or $20,000 for a family plan, Barlow said. Average family premiums have increased 55% since 2008, rising twice as fast as earnings and three times as fast as inflation, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.
The new group is aimed at businesses of all sizes and types.
“We have folks who are sole proprietors who buy their own health insurance; we have folks who have been running a manufacturing company for decades and have seen how health insurance has eaten into their profits and wage increases,” Barlow said.
Business for Medicare for All was started by former health insurance executive Wendell Potter and MCS Industries Chairman and CEO Richard Master, who say the existing health insurance system costs companies more than a single-payer plan would. The two want to uncouple health insurance from the workplace, making health care more available to independent contractors and others.
“We believe a health care guarantee, regardless of where someone works, is the only business-friendly, economically sustainable way to achieve universal health care in America,” the group says.
Achieving universal health care is not a goal commonly associated with business leaders.
“I love the idea of health care for all; I do think that is a right that everyone deserves,” said John LeBourveau, the head of human resources for Darn Tough, the sock company in Northfield that employs about 300 people. “I don’t trust that our government has demonstrated the ability to manage that in a responsible way.”
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce strongly opposes the federal legislation — sponsored in the Senate by Sanders and by Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., in the House — that would lead to a national, single-payer, government-run system.
But Bram Kleppner, CEO of Danforth Pewter and a longtime supporter of universal health care, said the data shows a single-payer system would save employers money.
“The data is pretty clear that universal health care is cheaper and better than the piecemeal system we have,” said Kleppner. Danforth employs about 50 full-time and another 50-part time workers in its Vermont headquarters and nine stores. “The people who say it’s not are either not looking at the data, or are not understanding the data, or are in denial, or are lying.”
Sanders has said the U.S. spends more than $3.2 trillion each year on health care now, about 65% of that on publicly financed health care programs such as Medicare and Medicaid, and would save $500 billion per year by moving to a single-payer system.
At $10,000 per person, that’s a larger percentage of GDP than any other country, but millions of people remain uninsured or underinsured, according to Sanders. He would like to pay for extending coverage by raising taxes on the wealthy and closing several loopholes.
The idea of a single-payer system has not caught on with mainstream business groups.
“These proposals would limit access, increase costs for employers and workers, and inhibit innovation,” the U.S. Chamber said in a letter to lawmakers in March.
The president of the Vermont Chamber of Commerce, Betsy Bishop, said her group focuses on statewide health insurance issues. The National Federation for Independent Business also opposes a single-payer plan.
But Vermont, a progressive state that several years ago made a run at establishing a single-payer plan, is a logical place to start rallying the businesses that do support universal health care, Barlow noted. The Vermont-based Ben & Jerry’s, Danforth Pewter and the Alchemist brewery have already signed up, he said.
“Obviously we’re in Bernie Sanders country here, so the idea of single payer and Medicare for All has stronger cultural recognition,” he said.
The nonprofit group can’t lobby for legislation or endorse candidates, “but we’re not going to be shy about expressing our opinion when a candidate says something we support or something we think,” Barlow said. Right now, it’s supporting the health care plans promoted by Democratic Sens. Sanders and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts.
LeBourveau, of Darn Tough, said that competition for workers has the company taking a closer look at its health insurance benefits. He’d like to see health insurance coverage more accessible to all. But he doesn’t think any business wants to turn over control of the costs to the government.
“I personally believe it would cost us more money than we would save as a company,” he said of the Sanders proposal. “Once the government takes control, their way of solving it is simply to ask for more money.”
Kleppner said health care costs consume 12% of payroll at Danforth.
“If we can do an 8% payroll tax and pay for Medicare, we’re better off,” he said. Some companies have negotiated better deals, or have younger populations, and pay a lower proportion of payroll, even lower than 8%, he noted. But they’ll benefit too, he said.
“It’s going to feel to them in the very short term like their costs went up, but long term their costs will go down, as they have healthier employees and healthier job candidates applying,” he said.
Of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other critics in general, Kleppner asked for alternative proposals.
“Do you have any other ideas that make the least bit of sense?” he said. “Because there is no one who thinks our current system is going to work for very much longer, and it already doesn’t work for a lot of people.”