California Senate passes single payer health coverage
Jun 5, 2017 11:05:53 GMT -6
Post by shadesofgold on Jun 5, 2017 11:05:53 GMT -6
Here is the full economic analysis of the proposal, for the wonky among you. From the abstract:
"The primary goal of Healthy California is to provide high-quality health care to all
California residents, including those who are presently either uninsured or underinsured. The
study finds that the providing full universal coverage would increase overall system costs by
about 10 percent, but that the single payer system could produce savings of about 18 percent.
The study thus finds that the proposed single-payer system could provide decent health care for
all California residents while still reducing net overall costs by about 8 percent relative to the
existing system. We propose two new taxes to generate the revenue required to offset the loss
of private insurance spending: a gross receipts tax of 2.3 percent and a sales tax of 2.3 percent,
along with exemptions and tax credits for small business owners and low-income families to
promote tax-burden equity. Within this proposed tax framework, Healthy California can
achieve both lower costs and greater equity in the provision of health care in California for both
families and businesses of all sizes. Thus, net health care spending for middle-income families
will fall by between 2.6 – 9.1 percent of income. Small firms that have been providing private
health care coverage for their workers will experience a 22 percent decline in their health-care
costs as a share of payroll. The small firms that have not provided coverage will still make zero
payments for health care under Healthy California through their gross receipts tax exemption.
Medium-sized firms will see their health care costs fall by between 6.8 and 13.4 percent as a
share of payroll relative to the existing system. Firms with up to 500 employees will experience
a 5.7 percent fall, and the largest firms, with over 500 employees, will experience a 0.6 percent
fall as a share of payroll relative to the existing system."