While Republicans fight amongst themselves and with Democrats to pass a new federal health-care law, state senators are pushing their own plan in Ohio.
Democratic Sen. Mike Skindell of Lakewood wants Ohio to switch to a single payer, universal health-care system. He says this makes health care more reliable and affordable.
Skindell, who’s part of a super minority in the Senate, understands the odds against a bill like this but says he’ll keep pursuing it because, as he puts it, the current health care system in the U.S. is going to self-destruct.
“The failure in our system unlike in other industrialized systems throughout the world is that we have this huge built-in private system that has extraordinarily high administrative costs,” Skindell says.
But opponents say a single-payer system will expand government, cost too much and implode the coverage people already have.
