Sanders Says States Should Be Able To Adopt Single Payer

(Host) Senator Bernie Sanders says Congress should give individual states the option to establish single payer health insurance systems.

Sanders says a state run system would demonstrate that the single payer concept could also work at the national level. 

VPR's Bob Kinzel reports.

(Kinzel) Now that the U.S. House has given its approval to a health care reform bill, the action on this issue shifts over to the U.S. Senate.

Senator Bernie Sanders says he's going to offer an amendment to the bill that creates a national single payer health care system.  Sanders says he realizes that the amendment has absolutely no chance of passing. But he wants to develop a baseline of support for this concept.

(Sanders) "I believe that a single payer system is the most effective way to provide comprehensive, universal, cost-effective health care. ... That ain't going to happen. The health insurance industry and the drug companies are too powerful."

(Kinzel) Sanders is hopeful that efforts to implement a single payer system can be advanced by another amendment he plans to offer.  This proposal would allow individual states to set up their own single payer systems.

(Sanders) "So that if states like Vermont or California or Pennsylvania - states that are strong in a single payer movement - want to move in that direction that they will be able to do so. And I think ... what you will probably end up seeing is we will move toward a Medicare for all program when one state does it and does it well. And other states say, ‘You know what? That looks like the most cost effective, fairest way to provide quality care to all people.'"

(Kinzel) Governor Jim Douglas has been very active in the national health care reform debate as the chairman of the National Governors Association. He doesn't support this state option amendment. 

(Douglas) "Are we really going to collapse Medicaid and Medicare and veterans' benefits and in some cases very generous union contract health benefits into a single state, one-size-fits-all health scheme? I really wonder if Vermonters would be interested in that, despite the appeal philosophically."

(Kinzel) And Douglas says he believes that efforts to enact health care reform must be done at the national level.

(Douglas) "It's the federal government that pays a great deal of the costs in so many programs. And the Congress appears serious about looking at reforms on a national basis. I think that makes more sense."

(Kinzel) The Senate is expected to begin its debate over the health care reform bill next week.

For VPR News. I'm Bob Kinzel in Montpelier