Cyr a leader of single-payer push
Five amendments sponsored by the freshman lawmaker were included in the bill, most notably a proposal to measure the impact a single-payer -- or publicly financed -- system would have on the cost and delivery of health care in
"This is huge," Cyr said Tuesday. "We are the first Legislature in the nation to move forward on this. If this (bill) gets enacted through the House, it will be a nation-leading effort."
"This is for the middle class," he said. "If businesses were freed up from how much they spend on health insurance costs, it would change the conversation about offering higher wages and other benefits for employees."
Cyr's "Health Care as a Right" amendment calls for the state's
If the single-payer plan is determined to be more cost-effective, the commission would be required to submit a "Single-Payer Healthcare Implementation Plan" to be enacted by the Legislature.
"My colleagues really want us to view health care as a right and move toward that," Cyr said.
A similar bill filed five years ago was defeated in the
"Even if you're skeptical of single-payer, you'd want the state to do this study," Cyr said.
State Sen. Viriato "Vinny" deMacedo, R-
"I'm not opposed to a study, but I believe they will come up with the same conclusion as
"If you don't have the resources, we subsidize it," he said, noting that 97 percent of residents have insurance, and the other 3 percent don't access coverage.
DeMacedo also took exception to an implementation plan being "triggered" in any of the three study years if the benchmark outperformed the actual amount spent by the state. He said he favored competition in health care and thought a single-payer system would sacrifice the quality of care in the
Another Cyr-sponsored amendment incorporated into the bill advocates for funding and reinstatement of the state's
The program, from which community health organizations in
The entire health care reform bill now moves to the
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