Senate members are considering a bill that would replace the country's existing employer-based health care model with a single-payer form similar to the models used in Europe.

Sen. Bernie Sanders, Democrat from Vermont and sponsor of the American Health Security Act of 2009, announced his intentions to file the bill earlier this month during the president's health care reform summit. It was filed March 25.

The system would guarantee health care coverage to every citizen. Benefits would include funding for primary care, mental health care and dental. Benefit packages would be managed on the state-level, similar to the operation of Medicaid.

The measure would also create a National Health Service Corps to combat the nation's physician shortage by training an additional 24,000 health professionals.

The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the measure would save the country $400 billion annually by reducing the number of uninsured and removing the administrative costs of other government-sponsored health care programs already on the books.   

"This is excellent news for the nation's health," according to a statement from Dr. Quentin Young, national coordinator of Physicians for a National Health Program and a past president of the American Public Health Association. "There is now an affordable cure for our dysfunctional health care system. In the face of our present economic calamity, this is an urgent necessity."

Sanders' bill, which draws heavily on legislation proposed by the late Sen. Paul Wellstone, a Democrat from Minnesota, is similar to a measure proposed in February by Rep. Jim McDermott, a Democrat from Washington.

The bill's toughest opponents are key Democratic Senators Max Baucus, a Democrat from Montana, and Edward Kennedy, a Democrat from Massachusetts, both of whom have filed bills that would preserve the central role of private insurance companies in the nation's health care system.