Single payer

Single Payer refers to a health care system having only one payer of all health care expenses, typically a socialistic big government Welfare state - Nanny state. That payer would rely on tax revenues and perhaps some insurance premiums to fund its reimbursements and costs.

Currently the federal government accounts for 43% of all health care expenditures, and a series of recent mergers among health insurance companies leaves only three major insurers. It appears that health care is approaching a single payer system, or something close to it.

Switzerland, which has mandatory health insurance, rejected a proposal to adopt a single payer system on March 11, 2007. 71% of voters opposed it. Switzerland currently has 87 different private health plans.

At the first 2016 presidential debate, Donald Trump declared the following:

“

As far as single payer, it works in Canada. It works incredibly well in Scotland. It could have worked in a different age, which is the age you're talking about here.

”

To which Rand Paul responded:

“

the Republican Party's been fighting against a single-payer system ... for a decade. So I think you're on the wrong side of this if you're still arguing for a single-payer system.

”

David Hogberg wrote:

• A single-payer health care system is one in which a single-entity—the government—collects almost all of the revenue for and pays almost all of the bills for the health care system. In most single-payer systems only a small percentage of health care expenses are paid for with private funds. Countries that have a single-payer system include Australia, Canada, Sweden and the United Kingdom.

Single-payer is popular among the political left in the United States.

See also

• Universal health care
• Health care in Nazi Germany