From the Brattleboro Reformer –
The health care committee of the Vermont House is lining up some of the tasks that will have to be finished before the state rolls out the first-in-the-nation single payer health care system, now scheduled for 2017.
Meeting Friday at the Statehouse, the committee heard from legislative staffers who outlined details that will have to be worked out, such as how to ensure the state gets the maximum amount of federal dollars and who would be covered.
There are details such as what would happen if a person living in Vermont works in another state where their employer offers health insurance or if someone from another state worked in Vermont and their employer didn’t offer insurance.
On Tuesday, Gov. Peter Shumlin recommitted the state to the single payer goal.
As it should be Mick. States were always meant to have the autonomy to do things differently and people would choose success and failure of the various policies with their feet.
ReplyDeleteThe problem that we have in realizing the success of that kind of incubator thinking is the need of control freaks to create a country of homogenized laws where living in Vermont, except for the color of the leaves in fall, would feel just like living in Arizona.
People of the US are so smitten with the universal health care systems of Europe but what they don't consider is that each country is different and administers a different plan. It would appear that Germany has set the bar with its programs... a bar that could possibility be emulated by other EU countries... or perhaps another country will implement one that is even better.
Problem in Europe is that a group of people are dead set on homogenizing life in every country. Control freaks that are determined, just like here in the US, to make life in Spain look just like life in Sweden.. A shame to because they both have such lovely cultures and customs. The push by people to create an overbearing Federal nanny structure, could very well be the demise of the EU experiment and its monetary policy the end of the Euro.
I say, Vermont should go for it and when it steals some of the brightest people to its borders, perhaps other states will look at the same thing. Again, the problem that is eluded to in the brief article is working across borders. States should be allowed reciprocal agreements... but the 'Federalists' would have none of that... too much autonomy.
This by the way is exactly the problem we have with our education system.