Vermont calls it quits on single payer

In a December 23, 2014 opinion piece in CommonWealth, health policy expert John McDonough of Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health lamented Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin’s recent decision not to pursue a single-payer financing scheme for health insurance in that state because of exorbitant projected costs.

But while the Vermont decision “signals the end of serious efforts to achieve single payer at the state level,” McDonough, professor of the practice of public health, thinks that, eventually, Republicans and Democrats at the federal level will propose health insurance consolidation of the current patchwork of programs—Medicare, Medicaid, and the Affordable Care Act (ACA) subsidy/exchange structure. “The illogic and wastefulness of running these enormous, siloed health insurance behemoths will become clear,” he wrote.

Read John McDonough’s CommonWealth article: Vermont ends single payer bid

Learn more

Bringing single-payer health care to Vermont (In the news)

The art of getting things done (Harvard Public Health Review)

ACA this week (In the news)