May 27, 2011 | 8:57 AM |

Vermont Gov. Signs First In Nation Single-Payer Health System Into Law

FILED UNDER: Medicine/Science, single-payer, vermont

Vermont makes history with the nation's first single-payer health care system

It’s official. Gov. Peter Shumlin signed into law the first single-payer health care system in the U.S.

VTDigger.org reports:

The legislation sets up a framework for developing an implementation plan for Green Mountain Care, a universal, unified health care system. The bill creates a five-member board that will oversee the development of a benefits package, a reimbursement system for doctors and hospitals, and a financing system to support the universal health care plan. The law also contains provisions for Vermont’s federal insurance exchanges…

The governor spelled out a vision in which health insurance coverage would be decoupled from employment and the financial burden now borne by employers would be lifted; in which providers who are having difficulty surviving in the current system are compensated fairly; and in which uninsured and underinsured Vermonters will have access to health care. The bill lays out a timeline for the implementation of the complicated plan over a three-year period. Though the Shumlin administration hopes to launch Green Mountain Care in 2014, it could be 2017 before the system is in place because of certain federal requirements.

About the author

Blogger, CommonHealth Rachel Zimmerman worked as a staff reporter for The Wall Street Journal for 10 years, most recently covering health and medicine out of the paper’s Boston bureau. Rachel has also written for The New York Times, the (now-defunct) Seattle Post-Intelligencer and the alternative newspaper Willamette Week, in Portland, Ore., among other publications. Rachel co-wrote a book about birth, published by Bantam/Random House, and spent 2008 as a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT. Rachel lives in Cambridge with her husband and two daughters. View all posts by Rachel Zimmerman →