National Health Insurance: A possible solution.... Part 2

Types of Insurance:
Single Payer Health Care: Some countries implement national health insurance through taxation or by legislation requiring compulsory contributions to a national insurance fund operated by the government from which medical expenses are provided by private entities (doctors and hospitals). This is known in the United States as single-payer health care.

Socialized Medicine: Some countries implement national health insurance through taxation and/or by legislation requiring compulsory contributions to a national insurance fund operated by government, but the money can only be spent on health services commissioned by government. This is referred to by some in the United States as socialized medicine. An example of this is the UK's National Health Service.

Equalization Pool: Some countries implement national health insurance funds which must provide a minimum standard of coverage and are not allowed to discriminate between patients by charging different rates according to age, occupation or previous health status. To protect the interest of both patients and insurance companies, the government establishes an equalization pool to spread risks between the various funds. Thus a fund with predominantly younger, healthier patients pays into the pool, and older, sicker patients may receive from the pool. The government may also contribute to the pool as a form of health care subsidy.
Social Health Insurance: countries are largely funded from contributions by employers and employees to sickness funds. Funds do not come from the government, and neither from direct private payments. This system operates in many European countries such as Germany, Belgium and Ireland. These countries have a social health insurance systems which is characterized by the presence of sickness funds, which can be based on professional, regional, religious, or political affiliation.

Here is a little background on the proposal for NHI
Historical Background:
political efforts:Theodore Roosevelt was the first presidential candidate to call for national health insurance in his 1912 third party bid for president. The only major national health insurance proposal introduced in Congress during this period was a House Joint Resolution submitted in 1916 by a Socialist Congressman Meyer London from New York's East Side. Most of the action was at the state level, with universal coverage initiatives discussed in CA, NY and several other states.

Oppositions: Woodrow Wilson, when became the president in his first inaugural address in 1913 had suggested the federal government should safeguard the nation's health but he never seriously pursued this issue during his presidency as he was preoccupied with other issues in his first term such as World War I. In Wilson’s second term as president there was a congressional initiative hearing even though it was never voted on in the committee.
Several groups who had initially supported national health care reforms began to change their position. Health care reform came late in the Progressive era when a more conservative atmosphere was covering the United States. World War one was also a major reason why national health insurance care reform never gained much momentum. The public's attention was taken by the war. Because national health insurance began in Germany, it was seen as unpatriotic during the war to support the movement. Medical profession, labor organizations and businesses groups because of their self interests clashed in ways prevented reform from becoming a reality.

On the state level between 1915 and 1920, eight states (California, Connecticut, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin) appointed official commissions to investigate health insurance. The "Standard Bill" for health insurance was drafted by the American Association for Labor Legislation in 1915 and introduced in a number of state legislators. In 1919 it was introduced in a bipartisan manner and held strong support from labor groups and civic associations, but no state bill was ever enacted because of growing oppositions. Doctors initially supported the idea of universal coverage at the state level, but ultimately came to the conclusion that government medicine might pose a serious threat to their livelihoods. They were successfully able to organize strong opposition to reform initiatives so that nothing was enacted. Pharmacists opposed the legislation because prescription drugs insurance payments, they feared would destabilize their business. While commercial insurance firms did not offer health insurance during this period, a large part of their business was offering burial insurance to pay funeral costs.

The fact that people generally felt actual health insurance (as opposed to sickness insurance) was unnecessary prior to 1920 also helped to defeat proposals for compulsory, nationalized health insurance in the same period. Although many European nations had adopted some form of compulsory nationalized health insurance by 1920 the proposals sponsored by the American Association for Labor Legislation (AALL) to enact compulsory health insurance in several states were never enacted.

However, later The Social Security Amendments of 1965 created a governmental health insurance program known as Medicare intended primarily for the aged. In 1993 President Bill Clinton introduced a plan for universal health care coverage but a negotiation could not be reached with the opponents in Congress and the bill died.

Single payer as National Health Insurance:
Single payer is one alternative proposed for reforming the U.S. health care system. According to the National Library of Medicine's Medical Subject Heading thesaurus, a Single Payer System is
“An approach to health care financing with only one source of money for paying health care providers. The scope may be national, state-wide, or community based. The payer may be a governmental unit or other entity such as an insurance company. The proposed advantages include administrative simplicity for patients and providers, and resulting significant savings in overhead costs.”

A Single payer system would provide universal coverage with at least the same quality and lower costs. The term single payer is sometimes used in the U.S. to distinguish systems paid from a single (governmental) source with other systems of health care in which the government has a higher degree of control including administering hospitals and employing doctors and staff, though logically these too are single payer systems. When the term single payer is used in this way, doctor’s practices and hospitals may remain private and negotiate with the government for fees.

The United States, Canada and Australia have single payer health insurance programs named Medicare; however, Australia's program provides universal health insurance, while U.S. Medicare is only for senior citizens. Government is increasingly involved in U.S. health care spending, paying about 45 percent of the $2.2 trillion the nation spent on medical care in 2004.

The Veterans Administration is a single payer system and provides excellent quality. In a peer reviewed paper published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, researchers of the RAND Corp. reported that the quality of care received by Veterans Administration patients scored significantly higher overall than did comparable metrics for patients in the rest of the U.S. health system.