May 26, 2011 (TruthDig.com) -- Vermont is a land of proud firsts. This small, New England state was the first to join the 13 Colonies. Its constitution was the first to ban slavery. It was the first to establish the right to free education for all -- public education.
Today, Vermont will boast another first: the first state in the nation to offer single-payer health care, which eliminates the costly insurance companies that many believe are the root cause of our spiraling health care costs. In a single-payer system, both private and public health care providers are allowed to operate, as they always have. But instead of the patient or the patient’s private health insurance company paying the bill, the state does.
It’s basically Medicare for all -- just lower the age of eligibility to the day you’re born. The state, buying these health care services for the entire population, can negotiate favorable rates, and can eliminate the massive overhead that the for-profit insurers impose.
Vermont hired Harvard economist William Hsiao to come up with three alternatives to the current system. The single-payer system, Hsiao wrote, “will produce savings of 24.3 percent of total health expenditure between 2015 and 2024.”
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BANGKOK, Jan 11 — A series of late-night bomb attacks targeted 11 PTT petrol stations in Thailand’s southern border provinces of Narathiwat, Pattani and Yala…
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At least eight refugees died and 37 were rescued when their boat sank off Badmeli near Izmir, Turkish authorities said on Saturday.
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Health officials in Oregon have confirmed the state's first measles cases of 2026, with two people diagnosed in Linn County.
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Measles in North Carolina: State reports 5th case linked to South Carolina surge
