What is a Single-Payer System?
Doctors and hospitals in the United States are now paid by private insurance companies, employers who self-insure, government programs including Medicaid and Medicare, and patients themselves. Switching to a single-payer system would simplify all this: one institution–the government–would pay the nation’s health care bills. Canada, Great Britain, and several other countries have single-payer health care systems, but of very different kinds. In Canada, provincial governments cover every patient with the same package of benefits, but doctors can remain in private practice and hospitals are mostly privately owned (though non-profit). In Britain, doctors receive a salary directly from the government, or a lump-sum fee (capitation) for each patient who signs up with them, and government owns and operates most hospitals. In short, Canada has socialized insurance; Britain has socialized medicine. In 1987, more than 6000 physicians came together to form Physicians for a National Health Progr
