Socialist Medicine Fails in Vermont
Posted on December 20, 2014 by Mark Horne — 8 Comments
“Single-Payer” Healthcare is just a euphemism for socialist medicine. The Governor of Vermont has given up on it.
I am sure I disagree with many things that Governor Peter Shumlin believes and does as the chief executive for the state of Vermont. He actually wanted socialist medicine and thought it would b e a blessing to the people of Vermont rather than a curse. To me, it is hard to understand how anyone could hold such an opinion without being certifiably delusional.
But I actually have a great deal of respect for Shumlin, right now. No matter what his other problems (and I assume they are many) he at least had the integrity to bow to reality. When the math didn’t work and he knew it didn’t work he called off his utopian plan.
I think that took character.
According to Associated Press at Yahoo News: “Governor abandons single-payer health care plan.”
Calling it the biggest disappointment of his career, Gov. Peter Shumlin said Wednesday he was abandoning plans to make Vermont the first state in the country with a universal, publicly funded health care system.
Going forward with a project four years in the making would require tax increases too big for the state to absorb, Shumlin said. The measure had been the centerpiece of the Democratic governor’s agenda and was watched and rooted for by single-payer health care supporters around the country.
“I am not going (to) undermine the hope of achieving critically important health care reforms for this state by pushing prematurely for single payer when it is not the right time for Vermont,” Shumlin said to reporters and two boards advising him on health care changes.
Legislation Shumlin signed in 2011 put the state on a path to move beyond the federal Affordable Care Act by 2017 to a health care system more similar to that in neighboring Canada. Shumlin adopted the mantra that access to quality health care should be “a right and not a privilege.”
The legislation called for the administration to produce a plan for financing the Green Mountain Care system by 2013 but it wasn’t completed until the last several days. Shumlin said it showed the plan would require an 11.5 percent payroll tax on businesses and an income tax separate from the one the state already has of up to 9.5 percent.
Shumlin said small business owners would be hit with both, and he repeatedly expressed concern about whether those businesses, many of which now don’t offer health insurance or offer much less costly insurance, could cover the new expense.
The fact that Shumlin is claiming that this is about “timing”—that “it is not the right time for Vermont”—tells me he is still somewhat delusional. But at least he had the courage to publicly back out of the idea when he saw that it wouldn’t work.
No really: socialism doesn’t work.
Read more at
http://politicaloutcast.com/2014/12/socialist-medicine-fails-vermont/#qCkzsltVykywH4Wf.99
