Dive Brief:
- New York state Assembly members overwhelmingly passed the New York Health Act this week by a vote of 89-47 in an effort to create a single-payer healthcare system.
- The bill will now go to the state's Republican-led Senate but is not expected to pass.
- The goal of the bill is to lower healthcare costs by eliminating insurance companies—a concept that has had mixed reception.
Dive Insight:
The premise of the bill, which is that eliminating insurers would reduce costs, does not have everyone convinced. Opponents argue that insurance plays a necessary role in discouraging overuse of healthcare.
Opponents also questioned the estimate presented by Assemblyman Richard Gottfried, who chairs the Senate's health committee, that the bill's single-payer system would save $45 billion by 2019.
Some Republicans also voiced concern about the job losses that would result from ending an industry, and argued that the bill overpromises on savings and access to care.
Leslie Moran of the New York Health Plan Association told the Capital that the bill "represents an unrealistic, utopian view of a universal health care system where everyone would be covered, everything would be covered and the system would magically pay for it all."