Faced with rising costs and residents still without health insurance, Vermont lawmakers are poised to pass a single-payer healthcare plan, which would reshape how the state’s doctors are paid and become the first of its type in the US.

The plan, approved last month by the Vermont House of Representatives, was designed by William Hsiao, an economics professor at the Harvard School of Public Health. Hsiao also designed the single-payer system in Taiwan, and consulted on healthcare reform in seven other countries.

With many states looking for a way to cope with spiraling health care costs, we asked Hsiao to explain how his prescription for Vermont would work.

When Vermont asked you to devise this plan, what were the state’s goals?

Vermont made clear what goals they wanted to achieve: namely, universal coverage. Because under the [Obama healthcare reform] there are still going to be 5 percent of people not covered. Second, they wanted to bring the under-insured up to some common standard benefit package. In Vermont, 15 percent of the people who have insurance have very shallow insurance. Third, they wanted to have a plan that can control cost escalation. And finally, their goal is to move healthcare delivery into an integrated delivery system. That entails integrating prevention, primary care, secondary care, and tertiary care into a vertically integrated healthcare delivery system. That’s what just about every state wants to do. This is what often is referred to by the Madison Avenue term, value-based health care.

Full story: With health costs rising, Vermont moves toward a single-payer system – Boston Globe