(Phila.) Evening Bulletin - Single-Payer Health Plan Considered

The Evening Bulletin - Inside Today's Bulletin - 03/20/2008 - Single-Payer Health Plan Considered:

"Gov. Ed Rendell (D) chiefly advocates a different plan that would subsidize health insurance for roughly 800,000 state residents who lack it. A portion of the plan that would cover Pennsylvanians who earn up to 200 percent of the poverty income level passed the state House Monday. That measure alone would cost an estimated $1.1 billion by 2013.

The nonprofit Healthcare for All Pennsylvanians wants to go even further by backing a single-payer system, noting that all other industrialized countries have opted for universal health care.

'Eighty-seven nations and our own Medicare system can't be wrong,' said Healthcare for All Pennsylvanians executive director Chuck Pennacchio. 'In fact, they demonstrate clearly that the only proven method for delivering quality, comprehensive, affordable health care for all is through a single-payer model. In the case of [this legislation], health care delivery is to be publicly funded and privately provided. Everybody in, nobody out. Period.'

But the question remains: How much care will residents demand, and how much will they pay to acquire it?"

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