Lanhee J Chen, Columnist

Let States Dare to Make Health-Care Mistakes

Conservatives may be unhappy if states follow Vermont's failed single-payer experiment, but that should be the states' choice.

December 30, 2014 at 9:12 PM UTC

By Lanhee J Chen

Lanhee Chen is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution who also teaches public policy at Stanford University. He was the policy director of Mitt Romney's 2012 presidential campaign. Chen was a senior official at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in the George W. Bush administration. He practiced business litigation with the law firm of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP and served as the Winnie Neubauer visiting fellow in health policy studies at the Heritage Foundation. Chen earned his doctorate and master's degree in political science from Harvard University, his law degree from Harvard Law School and his bachelor's degree in government from Harvard College.

Where single payer goes to die.
Photographer: Brian Eden/Getty Images Contributor

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The death of Vermont’s effort to install single-payer health care is revealing -- and not only for what it says about the feasibility of such government-run systems in the U.S. It also shows conservatives a way forward if the Supreme Court voids broad swaths of the Affordable Care Act in 2015.

In King v. Burwell, the court will consider a challenge to the legality of Obamacare subsidies distributed in states using the federally run health-insurance exchange. The law states the subsidies may be distributed only through exchanges “established by the states.” But the Obama administration has argued for a broader reading permitting the distribution of subsidies to individuals living in states using the federal exchange.