Improving Value

Single Payer

While there are many potential variations of a single-payer system, common features include: funding for a core set of medical services that comes from a single, publicly financed source; provider reimbursement established by the public entity; and broad or universal coverage. An informed debate over single-payer approaches must explore the strategies’ potential to “bend the cost curve”—addressing areas where we overspend on healthcare while improving quality and addressing health disparities.

This Hub brief finds that single-payer is uniquely suited to address some reasons for high health spending (like excess administrative spending and monopoly pricing), but other healthcare value goals (such as reducing low-value care, increasing high-value care and improving health equity) will only be achieved if proposed legislation explicitly incorporates these ideas, and includes a flexible programmatic toolset and feedback mechanisms to ensure success.

More on this Topic

• Urban Institute: The Pros and Cons of Single-Payer Health Plans (March 12, 2019).
• Vox: Here's Why Creating Single-Payer Health Care in American is So Hard (January 16, 2016). 
• The Hopbrook Institute: Economic Analysis of Single payer Health Care in Ohio: Context, Savings, Costs, Financing (January 2019). 
• Vox: Single-Payer Health Care is More Popular Than Ever. Here are 10 Questions For Its Future (May 23, 2016)
• Modern Healthcare: Study: Single-Payer Gave Canada Lower Healthcare Admin Costs Than U.S. (January 6, 2020).