St. Paul, MN - This week Senator Roger Manno of the Senate Health and Human Services Subcommittee traveled to Minnesota to attend a conference on universal health care reform.

The 3-day conference, organized and sponsored by Physicians for a National Health Plan (PNHP) and the Milbank Memorial Fund, examined a variety of challenges in the current U.S. health system, and explored options improve coverage and delivery by creating both national and state "single-payer" universal health care systems.The "single-payer" health care model is a simplified and unified health delivery and payment system, that guarantees health care to all members of the system by eliminating private insurance and administrative waste. Single-payer systems exist in many nations, including Canada, the Neitherlands, Belgium, and Taiwan, and is currently being implamented in the State of Vermont.

Attendees of the conference included state lawmakers, largely in leadership positions,  from New York, Colorado, North Carolina, Kentucky, Maine, Washington, Utah, Iowa, Minnesota, Vermont, Massachusetts, Hawaii, and Maryland. Attendees also included health policy experts and providers from the Harvard University School of Public Health, the Princeton University Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, PNHP, the Milbank Memorial Fund, the Hunter College School of Public Health, the University of California Philip R. Lee Institute for Health Policy Studies, the University of Minnesota School of Public Health, Healthcare-NOW, National Nurses United, the Commonwealth Fund, and the California Nurses Association.

Highlights of the conference included sessions with William Hsiao of Harvard, who designed both the Taiwan and Vermont single-payer health systems, and Robin Lunge, Vermont's Director of Health Reform for the Governor.

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