A universal financing system would let hospitals prioritize community needs over profitable services
By Ellen Oxfeld
Dear Editor,
In his recent commentary for VTDigger, James Hodge was correct in his observation about proposed hospital transformation plans: Simply applying the same prices to a small hospital as a large hospital will not work in our current system.
Things would be quite different, however, if we had a universal publicly financed single payer, or at least a single payer for hospitals. We would then have global budgets for hospitals, which would actually give them more freedom to do what Hodge says they need to do: figure out what to prioritize in order to best serve their communities. continue reading….