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Will Americans Embrace Single-Payer Health Insurance: The Intractable Barriers Of Inertia, Free Market, And Culture, Susan Channick

Susan Channick

This article posits that the adoption of single-payer health insurance is effectively impossible in the United States. In spite of evidence that a single-payer system might be substantially more efficient and inexpensive than the complex, administratively-burdened multi-payer system we currently have, the probability that it can be part of health care reform is remote at best. The article identifies a number of reasons that a single-payer health insurance system cannot succeed ranging from inertia, path dependence, the expense of Medicare, the American belief in looking to the private sector for solutions to even social problems, the fear of big government …