Art Woolf, an associate professor of economics at the University of Vermont, believes the state's soon-to-be implemented all-payer system will be unsuccessful, he said in a column for the Burlington Free Press.
Here's what you should know.
1. Mr. Woolf claims the state had two goals for healthcare for the last three decades; increase the number of people covered by health insurance while reducing cost.
2. The state has only decreased the number of uninsured through the ACA and measures the state enacted in the last decade. However, spending has remained high.
3. To attempt to lower spending, the state enacted an all-payer system. Mr. Woolf compares the new initiative with a similar initiative Vermont enacted in the 1990s called managed care, where HMOs were operated by the insurance companies. He claims the HMOs "didn't work very well."
4. Based on past results, he isn't convinced the all-payer system will be successful either.
In the 1990s, Vermont's per captia healthcare spending was 12 percent below the national average; by 1999 under the HMOs, the state's spending was equal to the U.S. average and by 2009 it was 12 percent more than the national average.
So although the state has lowered its uninsured rate, the spending per capita has surpassed the national average.
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