Have any State health programs been generous and successful?

[Fire_Medic_Dave]

Tennessee tried a plan when Clinton was in office it is still around as far as I know but I have heard it has caused many budget problems. I asked about Mass. recent plan to require everyone to be insured recently and got very few responses. Why haven't the State programs been successful and what does that mean for Universal Health Care in the US if anything?

David

[jwirr]

1. IMO one of the difficulties for state programs is that they cannot eliminate

or take themselves out of the existing federal programs. What I mean by this is that one of the savings the feds will be able to make is that they will eliminate two of the three tiers (county, state & federal) of bureaucracy when it becomes a federal plan. States cannot do that because of the requirements they must meet for fed help.

Furthermore states cannot consolidate all health programs into one program thus cutting administration costs. Nor at this time can they negotiate the costs of medicines.

Minnesota Care is a good program but we have never been able to enroll everyone in need and it suffers from the above limitations so we did not really make changes just created a third medicaid/medicare program.

[Fire_Medic_Dave]

3. That sounds like what Tennessee did in the 1990's.

Thanks for the input. Definitely some aspects to consider.

David

[uppityperson]

2. WA has Basic Health Plan, sliding fee for health care

rates range from 0 to around $200/month for a single person, depending on income. Of course, what with funding dropping, they are trying to figure out who to cut. They have a long waiting list. My county has only 1 insurance company they deal with, which is too bad. Larger counties/communities have more to chose from.

No dental, vision, hearing benefits though