health insurance

Single Payer Health Care Gains Support

(EMAX HEALTH) - Single payer health care, paying doctors and hospitals out of one fund managed by the government, and paid to health care providers by either a government agency or insurance company, is gaining support. Single payer health care groups are pushing for streamlined payments that would result from single payer health care. This is another way of delivering universal health insurance, which aims to make the coverage more affordable.

Head of the Senate Finance Committee, Max Baucus seems to be moving Congress toward single payer health care, something President Obama has said simply will not happen. At this point, Baucus told reporters at the National Press Club, that single payer health care is “on the table”, saying there are many ways to accomplish the goal of health care reform.

Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP) claims, “private insurance bureaucracy and paperwork consume one-third (31 percent) of every health care dollar. Streamlining payment through a single nonprofit payer would save more than $350 billion per year, enough to provide comprehensive, high-quality coverage for all Americans”. The PNHP says that private insurers waste health care dollars and that single payer health care is one of the only ways to stop that waste. (1)

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