Gottfried vs. Hammond: Could single-payer health care ever work in New York?

With the debate over the fate of Obamacare raging on Capitol Hill, the Slant podcast featured a health care debate of it own, over the creation a single-payer system here in New York.

Assemblyman Dick Gottfried, the chairman of the Assembly Health Committee since 1987 and one of the leading health care policymakers in the nation, has been pushing the idea for years.

“For the general population, insurance companies have proven to be very good managers for insurance company stockholders,” Gottfried said. “They don’t do a very good job at making sure people get health care, or making sure that people can afford the health care they need without spending an arm and a leg.”

But Bill Hammond of the Empire Center for Public Policy, who has written extensively about health care, is skeptical it would work as advertised.

Both joined the Slant podcast to explain what exactly we mean when we say "single payer," the cost of such a system in terms of new taxes, and their thoughts on the Obamacare repeal debate. You can list to the full debate below.

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