Dr. Elmore Rigamer Interview on Single Payer Health Care

"The health care system is perfectly designed to give high costs and uneven quality. Each year the system becomes more complicated and expensive with dollars for administering it competing with dollars for patient care. Physician burnout is high, according to an August article in The Wall Street Journal, and people cannot figure out what health care costs are when they try to buy health insurance." http://www.nola.com/opinions/index.ssf/2014/09/single-payer_system_would_redu.html

Apparently a recent decision by the Governor of Vermont to scrap implementing a single payer system of healthcare was based on his claim that the taxes required to be raised would be too burdensome for the citizens of Vermont. But others including a lot of economists who have dug into the report say that it actually shows that a single payer system in Vermont is viable and benefits the majority of people, but would require raising taxes on large corporations and the wealthy folks. http://www.alternet.org/activism/29-arrested-single-payer-advocates-disrupt-vermont-gov-shumlins-inauguration

The costs to society of not having single payer health care include medical bankruptcy, illness and unnecessary deaths. The biggest obstruction to universal coverage supported by a one payer government system is the insurance lobby.

Dr. Rigamer believes that healthcare is a human right, not a privilege, and that it's feasible given the political will.