People have really strong opinions on single-payer healthcare. It could be the silver bullet
that fixes our healthcare system, or it could be....
But most people don't even know what single-payer means. So let's start with what we have.
You can think of the American healthcare system as a series of tubes.
We do not have single-payer healthcare. We have thousands
and thousands of payer healthcare. And each of them typically pay different amounts for
the exact same medical service. And that's a lot of administrative work. For every three
doctors in the United States, you have two billing staff standing behind them just handling
all that paperwork that comes in and out of a doctors' office. If you think of a single-payer
system, it is just one tube of payments. All money flows from the government to the doctors.
And it's actually pretty popular elsewhere. Medicare here in the U.S. is like that -- it
pays all the healthcare bills for people over 65. But there's also a catch. When the government
is the one paying all the bills, they get to decide what they will and will not pay
for. If the system isn't funded well enough, if they haven't raised enough taxes from their
citizens, that could lead to longer wait times and fewer doctors being available. Vermont
right now is trying to set up the very first single-payer system in the United States.
By one estimate, Vermont could save 25 percent. But it's also expensive. The state government
in Vermont needs to raise $2 billion. That is a lot of maple syrup. But people really
dislike the American healthcare system. It gets pretty poor marks from Americans. And
if you look at neighboring Massachusetts, their healthcare experiment in 2006 did lead
to Obamacare. So if this does work in Vermont, who knows what could be next.