States' Rights on Health Care Reform

Among the many criminally wrong lies teabaggers tell about health care reform is that it usurps states rights (although they say that about everything good this country has done since electing Abraham Lincoln.)

In fact, the Affordable Care Act specifically empowers states to establish their own health care reform. Anything goes - as long as it covers as many people as the federal system does.

At least two states - Vermont and Connecticut - are reality-based enough to see the huge advantages of establishing a statewide single-payer system.

Jon Walker has details on Connecticut's plan:

Connecticut is poised to be on the leading progressive edge of what is possible under the new federal health care law by providing a rather robust state-based public option. If the state adopts the proposed SustiNet health plan (PDF) it would integrate the many different group insurance plans the state currently provides into a unified self-insured program, provide quality automatic coverage to everyone under 200% of the Federal Poverty Level, and eventually offer a commercial “publicly-administered health plan” open to all individuals and business in the state, under the management of a quasi-government agency. Its designed to save the state roughly $300 million a year and hopefully reduce health care spending over the long-term.

SNIP

In a few days, Vermont’s health care advisory board is expected to present three proposals for reforming their health care system, which I will be looking at very closely. So far, though, this is the best proposal to deal implementing the new health care law I have seen in any state. While not prefect, if Connecticut and other states adopt this model, it will be a good step at the state level toward making decent reform out of what was frankly a pretty bad new federal law.

Read the whole thing.

States desperate to save money, desperate to stop health care costs from hemhorraging state budgets, are going to take one look at how single-payer is saving money, lives and political futures in Vermont and Connecticut, and tell the teabaggers to fuck off and die.