Posted on 12/24/2014 6:05:50 AM PST by LeoMcNeil
Vermont Governor Peter Shumlin campaigned on socialist medicine. He promised to turn Vermont into a socialist paradise, complete with “free” healthcare for all. Last week he announced that socialist medicine was too expensive for Vermont. Not even Johnathan Gruber could save the single payer dreams of Vermont socialists. The fact is socialist single payer is too expensive for the people of Vermont. The state has an annual budget of $2.7 billion. Socialist single payer would have added $1.6-2.5 billion to the budget with the latter end of projections more likely. Doubling state expenditures means doubling taxes, with an 8% income tax not out of the question. Vermont passed on socialist single payer because it’s too expensive.
If Vermont cannot come up with the money to pay for socialist single payer, how can the rest of the country? The clear goal of Obamacare is single payer socialism, it’s entire purpose is to lead the country to that point. Obamacare itself is already extremely expensive for taxpayers, businesses and individuals. While the government is wasting money on television advertisements touting all the subsidies available under Obamacare, someone is stuck paying for those subsidies. Meanwhile insurance premiums are up substantially, as are deductibles. In other words, Obamacare is offering less coverage at a greater cost. Make no mistake, if your deductible has increased your healthcare coverage has decreased as your policy covers less of your healthcare costs. It doesn’t matter how many services or procedures your policy covers, if you’re paying for it out of pocket you have less insurance coverage.
The tax increases are just beginning. The Obamacare individual mandate tax was only $95 in 2014. In 2015 it bumps up to $325, in 2016 to $695. Under socialist single payer, you could be looking at taxes equaling 10% of income or more. This would make the individual mandate tax look paltry in comparison. The fact is our country cannot afford single payer. Not only is single payer a hit in the pocketbook, there’s absolutely no evidence that it provides better coverage. In fact, the best hospitals and doctors are largely located in the United States. There’s a reason for that, they operate without abundant government control. Yes, there is far too much control over the healthcare sector in this country with or without Obamacare. However doctors and hospitals in the United States are private and free. In Great Britian they’re owned and controlled by the state, in Canada and much of Western Europe they’re privately owned but utterly controlled by government actions.
The cost of socialist medicine in terms of freedom is high. Waiting times in Canada are extremely high. It is true you can easily see a doctor for a physical or for a simple illness such as a flu. However if you need a specialist or a basic diagnostic test like a MRI or CT, you’ll be on the waiting list for days, weeks or months. Great Britain isn’t any better. The left loves to point at life expectancy as evidence of socialist Europe having better healthcare. However when homicide and motor vehicle deaths are taken out of the equation (both are significantly higher in the US) American life expectancy is the longest in the world. In addition, the left never wants to talk about other factors such as lifestyle and how that affects life expectancy. At least they don’t want to talk about it in relation to healthcare. They’ll be happy to tax potato chips though.
Vermont is one of the most liberal states in the union. They continually elect socialists to serve in the US Senate. Yet even Vermont cannot overcome the sheer cost of socialist medicine in their state. Nearly doubling the state budget isn’t in the political cards, not even in liberal Vermont. Obamacare is giving all of us a glimpse of what the future of socialist medicine will look like. It’s big, it’s expensive and it’s inefficient. We can look to Canada and western Europe and see that it’s fraught with waiting lists and limited access. It also doesn’t produce results, the best hospitals and doctors aren’t working in countries with socialist medicine. Of course when it comes to American demands for either Obamacare or single payer it doesn’t come down to service. It comes down to power and control. We can only pray that the political costs of socialist medicine outweigh the desire of socialists to control us.
That would be "ayut", Flatlander. Haha
>>That would be “ayut”, Flatlander. Haha
LOL
If Congress can cut the tax to a penny they can also increase the tax to 100% of income.
Per Capita: VT: $42,994 US: $42,693
Median: VT: $52,977 US: $51,371
This is not a “poor” state and it can’t afford free healthcare.
Welfare recipients in Vermont make as much as the average worker. Seriously.
>>Oh, yes. My pockets won’t be picked. I’m retired and have minimized my tax exposure very well, thank you. I laugh at all you LIBs.
LOL. Medicare! The wealthy picking the pockets of the working class.
>>Welfare recipients in Vermont make as much as the average worker. Seriously.
I would hope so! You do have an openly-socialist Senator (which I applaud his honesty since he’s the only socialist in Congress who is man enough to admit it).
So, the takeaway is that the state feels that it can afford socialist benefits for the non-working, but can’t afford socialist benefits for the working people. When Obama says that he wants to help “working families”, he is saying the exact same thing.
Working-class Democrats need to wake up to this reality....and soon!
Easy solution; Barrow the money and kick the can down the road.
Exactly...when did “affordability” ever come into the equation. I am not familiar with this case, and I would never care about a stupid bunch of socialists until they start taking up arms, but sounds like they’re punting it down the road as to try to affix blame to someone else (republicans).
This can’t be right, how can it increase state costs when they told us it was free?
/sarcasm
A shame really. I was really hoping they’d do it and go broke to prove once and for all to the rest of the cretins out there that THIS DOES NOT WORK!
In a state of 600,000 we could have absorbed the failure.
If California tries this we are all in deep doo-doo.
I live next door in NH. So, I will try to answer your question. First of all, they were born there. Secondly, it really is a beautiful state. It is all mountains & river valleys. It is still very rural in comparison to its neighbors. Up until recently there were more cows in VT than people. Like a lot of blue states, the people in the more rural areas are out numbered by the liberals in the cities and college towns. This is the case with VT too. All the liberals live in Burlington. The salt of the earth dairy farmers are conservative. However, they have been outnumbered by the transplants from New York. Every bed & breakfast in VT is owned by some former New Yorker. Many were people that got rich in the financial business and then semi retired to VT to escape the rat race. Unfortunately, they brought their liberal politics with them.
The other Vermonter is your basic Hippie that moved there in the 1960’s. Literally people like Ben and Jerry. Hippies moved to VT in the 1960’s and lived in communes. Again, many were transplants from NY, Mass and other states. Now their kids have been indoctrinated in socialism since they were in diapers.
Maybe the famous Vermont 1%’er, Howard Dean, can contribute just half of his obscene personal fortune to help it. After all, he’s a committed socialist, right? Equality for everyone, right, Howard?
That plan works very well in big Dem electoral vote states like Cal, NY, and Ill.
But when you've got a puny 3 evs, you aren't gonna be a very big hog at the trough.
That is easy to fix, you have the 50% who work pay for the 50% who do not and then only the ones who do not work get healthcare!
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