Single payer health insurance

Single-payer health insurance is an expression that describes the payment for hospitals, doctor visits and other medical services from a particular fund. For example, National Health Service of Great Britain, health care system of Canada, and, of course, American Medicare for the disabled and old people are all single-payers structures.

A Single-Payer System is when only one source of money is used for paying the health care providers. The payer can be a government or other entities such as an insurance company. This system offers great advantages which help to save a lot of money and provide administrative simplicity for providers and patients.

This system was offered as an alternative reform for the health care system of the United States. Supporters of such system say that it could make universal coverage cheaper and probably even of higher quality. Opponents are upholding the principle that single-payer system would lower the quality of health care, and insurances in particular. Instead, critics promote free market approaches.

Medicare is a single-payer health insurance in the States, Canada and Australia. However, U.S. Medicare is mostly for senior citizens and disabled people, while the Australian system is universal and provides health insurance of the same name. Besides, U.S. health care spending involves a lot of governmental participation. Government of the USA pays about 45 percent of the overall expenses on medical care annually.

Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP) is one of the organizations that belongs to supporters of the single-payer system in the United States. Specialists say that full conversion to single-payer system might become a solution of the problems in the current U.S. health care. The national health care is the most expensive in the world, but still it doesn’t provide universal coverage. Comparing with other highly-developed countries, funds of the national health care system in the U.S. are spent inefficiently and they are difficult to access.

People, who advocate the reform in health care, argue that switching to a single-payer system would move the money, which are currently spent on the administrative problems, to run the insurance companies in the United States that could provide good universal coverage.

Advocates suggest that moving to the new system could make people’s life easier and give them free choice of providers and hospitals. Single-payer system could make the insurance much more affordable for low income and add new benefits to the low-cost plans.

This system could take away all the limits that insurance companies usually put on their plans. People would gain more rights in the sphere of health insurance. Researchers say that the big change hasn’t happened yet, because there is not enough political will for that, and what is interesting, most people are satisfied with their current insurance plans and physicians. What about you? Do you agree with that?